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At the same time, the Government of Bengal was placed on a new footing. The
power of the English in that province had hitherto been altogether undefined. It
was unknown to the ancient constitution of the empire, and it had been
ascertained by no compact. It resembled the power which, in the last decrepitude
of the Western Empire, was exercised over Italy by the great chiefs of foreign
mercenaries, the Ricimers and the Odoacers, who put up and pulled down at their
pleasure a succession of insignificant princes, dignified with the names of
Caesar and Augustus. But as in Italy, so in India, the warlike strangers at
length found it expedient to give to a domination which had been established by
arms the sanction of law and ancient prescription. Theodoric thought it politic
to obtain from the distant Court of Byzantium a commission appointing him ruler
of Italy; and Clive, in the same manner, applied to the Court of Delhi for a
formal grant of the powers of which he already possessed the reality. The Mogul
was absolutely helpless; and, though he murmured, had reason to be well pleased
that the English were disposed to give solid rupees, which he never could have
extorted from them, in exchange for a few Persian characters which cost him
nothing. A bargain was speedily struck; and the titular sovereign of Hindostan
issued a warrant, empowering the Company to collect and administer the revenues
of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar.
There was still a Nabob, who stood to the British authorities in the same
relation in which the last drivelling Chilperics and Childerics of the
Merovingian line stood to their able and vigorous Mayors of the Palace, to
Charles Martel, and to Pepin. At one time Clive had almost made up his mind to
discard this phantom altogether; but he afterwards thought that it might be
convenient still to use the name of the Nabob, particularly in dealings with
other European nations. The French, the Dutch, and the Danes, would, he
conceived, submit far more readily to the authority of the native Prince, whom
they had always been accustomed to respect, than to that of a rival trading
corporation. This policy may, at that time, have been judicious. But the
pretence was soon found to be too flimsy to impose on anybody; and it was
altogether laid aside. The heir of Meer Jaffier still resides at Moorshedabad,
the ancient capital of his house, still bears the title of Nabob, is still
accosted by the English as "Your Highness," and is still suffered to retain a
portion of the regal state which surrounded his ancestors. A pension of a
hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year is annually paid to him by the
government. His carriage is surrounded by guards, and preceded by attendants
with silver maces. His person and his dwelling are exempted from the ordinary
authority of the ministers of justice. But he has not the smallest share of
political power, and is, in fact, only a noble and wealthy subject of the
Company.
It would have been easy for Clive, during his second administration in Bengal,
to accumulate riches such as no subject in Europe possessed. He might indeed,
without subjecting the rich inhabitants of the province to any pressure beyond
that to which their mildest rulers had accustomed them, have received presents
to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds a year. The neighboring princes
would gladly have paid any price for his favor. But he appears to have strictly
adhered to the rules which he had laid down for the guidance of others. The
Rajah of Benares offered him diamonds of great value. The Nabob of Oude pressed
him to accept a large sum of money and a casket of costly jewels. Clive
courteously, but peremptorily refused; and it should be observed that he made no
merit of his refusal, and that the facts did not come to light till after his
death. He kept an exact account of his salary, of his share of the profits
accruing from the trade in salt, and of those presents which, according to the
fashion of the East, it would be churlish to refuse. Out of the sum arising from
these resources, he defrayed the expenses of his situation. The surplus he
divided among a few attached friends who had accompanied him to India. He always
boasted, and as far as we can judge, he boasted with truth, that this last
administration diminished instead of increasing his fortune.
One large sum indeed he accepted. Meer Jaffier had left him by will above sixty
thousand pounds sterling in specie and jewels: and the rules which had been
recently laid down extended only to presents from the living, and did not affect
legacies from the dead. Clive took the money, but not for himself. He made the
whole over to the Company, in trust for officers and soldiers invalided in their
service. The fund which still bears his name owes its origin to this princely
donation.
After a stay of eighteen months, the state of his health made it necessary for
him to return to Europe. At the close of January 1767, he quitted for the last
time the country, on whose destinies he had exercised so mighty an influence.
His second return from Bengal was not, like his first, greeted by the
acclamations of his countrymen. Numerous causes were already at work which
embittered the remaining years of his life, and hurried him to an untimely
grave. His old enemies at the India House were still powerful and active; and
they had been reinforced by a large band of allies whose violence far exceeded
their own. The whole crew of pilferers and oppressors from whom he had rescued
Bengal persecuted him with the implacable rancor which belongs to such abject
natures. Many of them even invested their property in India stock, merely that
they might be better able to annoy the man whose firmness had set bounds to
their rapacity. Lying newspapers were set up for no purpose but to abuse him;
and the temper of the public mind was then such, that these arts, which under
ordinary circumstances would have been ineffectual against truth and merit
produced an extraordinary impression.
The great events which had taken place in India had called into existence a new
class of Englishmen, to whom their countrymen gave the name of Nabobs. These
persons had generally sprung from families neither ancient nor opulent; they had
generally been sent at an early age to the East; and they had there acquired
large fortunes, which they had brought back to their native land. It was natural
that, not having had much opportunity of mixing with the best society, they
should exhibit some of the awkwardness and some of the pomposity of upstarts. It
was natural that, during their sojourn in Asia, they should have acquired some
tastes and habits surprising, if not disgusting, to persons who never had
quitted Europe. It was natural that, having enjoyed great consideration in the
East, they should not be disposed to sink into obscurity at home; and as they
had money, and had not birth or high connection, it was natural that they should
display a little obtrusively the single advantage which they possessed. Wherever
they settled there was a kind of feud between them and the old nobility and
gentry, similar to that which raged in France between the farmer-general and the
marquess. This enmity to the aristocracy long continued to distinguish the
servants of the Company. More than twenty years after the time of which we are
now speaking, Burke pronounced that among the Jacobins might be reckoned "the
East Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to find that their present
importance does not bear a proportion to their wealth."
The Nabobs soon became a most unpopular class of men. Some of them had in the
East displayed eminent talents, and rendered great services to the state; but at
home their talents were not shown to advantage, and their services were little
known. That they had sprung from obscurity, that they had acquired great wealth,
that they exhibited it insolently, that they spent it extravagantly, that they
raised the price of everything in their neighborhood, from fresh eggs to rotten
boroughs, that their liveries outshone those of dukes, that their coaches were
finer than that of the Lord Mayor, that the examples of their large and
ill-governed households corrupted half the servants in the country, that some of
them, with all their magnificence, could not catch the tone of good society,
but, in spite of the stud and the crowd of menials, of the plate and the Dresden
china, of the venison and the Burgundy, were still low men; these were things
which excited, both in the class from which they had sprung and in the class
into which they attempted to force themselves, the bitter aversion which is the
effect of mingled envy and contempt. But when it was also rumored that the
fortune which had enabled its possessor to eclipse the Lord Lieutenant on the
race-ground, or to carry the county against the head of a house as old as
Domesday Book, had been accumulated by violating public faith, by deposing
legitimate princes, by reducing whole provinces to beggary, all the higher and
better as well as all the low and evil parts of human nature were stirred
against the wretch who had obtained by guilt and dishonor the riches which he
now lavished with arrogant and inelegant profusion. The unfortunate Nabob seemed
to be made up of those foibles against which comedy has pointed the most
merciless ridicule, and of those crimes which have thrown the deepest gloom over
tragedy, of Turcaret and Nero, of Monsieur Jourdain and Richard the Third. A
tempest of execration and derision, such as can be compared only to that
outbreak of public feeling against the Puritans which took place at the time of
the Restoration, burst on the servants of the Company. The humane man was
horror-struck at the way in which they had got their money, the thrifty man at
the way in which they spent it. The Dilettante sneered at their want of taste.
The Maccaroni black-balled them as vulgar fellows. Writers the most unlike in
sentiment and style, Methodists and libertines, philosophers and buffoons, were
for once on the same side. It is hardly too much to say that, during a space of
about thirty years, the whole lighter literature of England was colored by the
feelings which we have described. Foote brought on the stage an Anglo-Indian
chief, dissolute, ungenerous, and tyrannical, ashamed of the humble friends of
his youth, hating the aristocracy, yet childishly eager to be numbered among
them, squandering his wealth on pandars and flatterers, tricking out his
chairmen with the most costly hot-house flowers, and astounding the ignorant
with jargon about rupees, lacs, and jaghires. Mackenzie, with more delicate
humor, depicted a plain country family raised by the Indian acquisitions of one
of its members to sudden opulence, and exciting derision by an awkward mimicry
of the manners of the great. Cowper, in that lofty expostulation which glows
with the very spirit of the Hebrew poets, placed the oppression of India
foremost in the list of those national crimes for which God had punished England
with years of disastrous war, with discomfiture in her own seas, and with the
loss of her transatlantic empire. If any of our readers will take the trouble to
search in the dusty recesses of circulating libraries for some novel published
sixty years ago, the chance is that the villain or sub-villain of the story will
prove to be a savage old Nabob, with an immense fortune, a tawny complexion, a
bad liver, and a worse heart.
Such, as far as we can now judge, was the feeling of the country respecting
Nabobs in general. And Clive was eminently the Nabob, the ablest, the most
celebrated, the highest in rank, the highest in fortune, of all the fraternity.
His wealth was exhibited in a manner which could not fail to excite odium. He
lived with great magnificence in Berkeley Square. He reared one palace in
Shropshire and another at Claremont. His parliamentary influence might vie with
that of the greatest families. But in all this splendor and power envy found
something to sneer at. On some of his relations wealth and dignity seem to have
sat as awkwardly as on Mackenzie's Margery Mushroom. Nor was he himself, with
all his great qualities, free from those weaknesses which the satirists of that
age represented as characteristic of his whole class. In the field, indeed, his
habits were remarkably simple. He was constantly on horseback, was never seen
but in his uniform, never wore silk, never entered a palanquin, and was content
with the plainest fare. But when he was no longer at the head of an army, he
laid aside this Spartan temperance for the ostentatious luxury of a Sybarite.
Though his person was ungraceful, and though his harsh features were redeemed
from vulgar ugliness only by their stern, dauntless, and commanding expression,
he was fond of rich and gay clothing, and replenished his wardrobe with absurd
profusion. Sir John Malcolm gives us a letter worthy of Sir Matthew Mite, in
which Clive orders "two hundred shirts, the best and finest that can be got for
love or money." A few follies of this description, grossly exaggerated by
report, produced an unfavorable impression on the public mind. But this was not
the worst. Black stories, of which the greater part were pure inventions, were
circulated touching his conduct in the East. He had to bear the whole odium, not
only of those bad acts to which he had once or twice stooped, but of all the bad
acts of all the English in India, of bad acts committed when he was absent, nay,
of bad acts which he had manfully opposed and severely punished. The very abuses
against which he had waged an honest, resolute, and successful war were laid to
his account. He was, in fact, regarded as the personification of all the vices
and weaknesses which the public, with or without reason, ascribed to the English
adventurers in Asia. We have ourselves heard old men, who knew nothing of his
history, but who still retained the prejudices conceived in their youth, talk of
him as an incarnate fiend. Johnson always held this language. Brown, whom Clive
employed to lay out his pleasure grounds, was amazed to see in the house of his
noble employer a chest which had once been filled with gold from the treasury of
Moorshedabad, and could not understand how the conscience of the criminal could
suffer him to sleep with such an object so near to his bedchamber. The peasantry
of Surrey looked with mysterious horror on the stately house which was rising at
Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked lord had ordered the walls to be
made so thick in order to keep out the devil, who would one day carry him away
bodily. Among the gaping clowns who drank in this frightful story was a
worthless ugly lad of the name of Hunt, since widely known as William
Huntington, S.S.; and the superstition which was strangely mingled with the
knavery of that remarkable impostor seems to have derived no small nutriment
from the tales which he heard of the life and character of Clive.
In the meantime, the impulse which Clive had given to the administration of
Bengal was constantly becoming fainter and fainter. His policy was to a great
extent abandoned; the abuses which he had suppressed began to revive; and at
length the evils which a bad government had engendered were aggravated by one of
those fearful visitations which the best government cannot avert. In the summer
of 1770, the rains failed; the earth was parched up; the tanks were empty; the
rivers shrank within their beds; and a famine, such as is known only in
countries where every household depends for support on its own little patch of
cultivation, filled the whole valley of the Ganges with misery and death. Tender
and delicate women, whose veils had never been lifted before the public gaze,
came forth from the inner chambers in which Eastern jealousy had kept watch over
their beauty, threw themselves on the earth before the passers-by, and, with
loud wailings, implored a handful of rice for their children. The Hoogley every
day rolled down thousands of corpses close to the porticoes and gardens of the
English conquerors. The very streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying
and the dead. The lean and feeble survivors had not energy enough to bear the
bodies of their kindred to the funeral pile or to the holy river, or even to
scare away the jackals and vultures, who fed on human remains in the face of
day. The extent of the mortality was never ascertained; but it was popularly
reckoned by millions. This melancholy intelligence added to the excitement which
already prevailed in England on Indian subjects. The proprietors of East India
stock were uneasy about their dividends. All men of common humanity were touched
by the calamities of our unhappy subjects; and indignation soon began to mingle
itself with pity. It was rumored that the Company's servants had created the
famine by engrossing all the rice of the country; that they had sold grain for
eight, ten, twelve times the price at which they had bought it; that one English
functionary who, the year before, was not worth a hundred guineas, had, during
that season of misery, remitted sixty thousand pounds to London. These charges
we believe to have been unfounded. That servants of the Company had ventured,
since Clive's departure, to deal in rice, is probable. That, if they dealt in
rice, they must have gained by the scarcity, is certain. But there is no reason
for thinking that they either produced or aggravated an evil which physical
causes sufficiently explain. The outcry which was raised against them on this
occasion was, we suspect, as absurd as the imputations which, in times of dearth
at home, were once thrown by statesmen and judges, and are still thrown by two
or three old women, on the corn factors. It was, however, so loud and so general
that it appears to have imposed even on an intellect raised so high above vulgar
prejudices as that of Adam Smith. What was still more extraordinary, these
unhappy events greatly increased the unpopularity of Lord Clive. He had been
some years in England when the famine took place. None of his acts had the
smallest tendency to produce such a calamity. If the servants of the Company had
traded in rice, they had done so in direct contravention of the rule which he
had laid down, and, while in power, had resolutely enforced. But, in the eyes of
his countrymen, he was, as we have said, the Nabob, the Anglo-Indian character
personified; and, while he was building and planting in Surrey, he was held
responsible for all the effects of a dry season in Bengal.
Parliament had hitherto bestowed very little attention on our Eastern
possessions. Since the death of George the Second, a rapid succession of weak
administrations, each of which was in turn flattered and betrayed by the Court,
had held the semblance of power. Intrigues in the palace, riots in the capital,
and insurrectionary movements in the American colonies, had left the advisers of
the Crown little leisure to study Indian politics. When they did interfere,
their interference was feeble and irresolute. Lord Chatham, indeed, during the
short period of his ascendancy in the councils of George the Third, had
meditated a bold attack on the Company. But his plans were rendered abortive by
the strange malady which about that time began to overcloud his splendid genius.
At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament could no longer
neglect the affairs of India. The Government was stronger than any which had
held power since the breach between Mr. Pitt and the great Whig connection in
1761. No pressing question of domestic or European policy required the attention
of public men. There was a short and delusive lull between two tempests. The
excitement produced by the Middlesex election was over; the discontents of
America did not yet threaten civil war; the financial difficulties of the
Company brought on a crisis; the Ministers were forced to take up the subject;
and the whole storm, which had long been gathering, now broke at once on the
head of Clive.
His situation was indeed singularly unfortunate. He was hated throughout the
country, hated at the India House, hated, above all, by those wealthy and
powerful servants of the Company, whose rapacity and tyranny he had withstood.
He had to bear the double odium of his bad and of his good actions, of every
Indian abuse and of every Indian reform. The state of the political world was
such that he could count on the support of no powerful connection. The party to
which he had belonged, that of George Grenville, had been hostile to the
Government, and yet had never cordially united with the other sections of the
Opposition, with the little band which still followed the fortunes of Lord
Chatham, or with the large and respectable body of which Lord Rockingham was the
acknowledged leader. George Grenville was now dead: his followers were
scattered; and Clive, unconnected with any of the powerful factions which
divided the Parliament, could reckon only on the votes of those members who were
returned by himself.
His enemies, particularly those who were the enemies of his virtues, were
unscrupulous, ferocious, implacable. Their malevolence aimed at nothing less
than the utter ruin of his fame and fortune. They wished to see him expelled
from Parliament, to see his spurs chopped off, to see his estate confiscated;
and it may be doubted whether even such a result as this would have quenched
their thirst for revenge.
Clive's parliamentary tactics resembled his military tactics. Deserted,
surrounded, outnumbered, and with everything at stake, he did not even deign to
stand on the defensive, but pushed boldly forward to the attack. At an early
stage of the discussions on Indian affairs he rose, and in a long and elaborate
speech vindicated himself from a large part of the accusations which had been
brought against him. He is said to have produced a great impression on his
audience. Lord Chatham, who, now the ghost of his former self, loved to haunt
the scene of his glory, was that night under the gallery of the House of
Commons, and declared that he had never heard a finer speech. It was
subsequently printed under Clive's direction, and, when the fullest allowance
has been made for the assistance which he may have obtained from literary
friends, proves him to have possessed, not merely strong sense and a manly
spirit, but talents both for disquisition and declamation which assiduous
culture might have improved into the highest excellence. He confined his defense
on this occasion to the measures of his last administration, and succeeded so
far that his enemies thenceforth thought it expedient to direct their attacks
chiefly against the earlier part of his life.
The earlier part of his life unfortunately presented some assailable points to
their hostility. A committee was chosen by ballot to inquire into the affairs of
India; and by this committee the whole history of that great revolution which
threw down Surajah Dowlah and raised Meer Jaffier was sifted with malignant
care. Clive was subjected to the most unsparing examination and
cross-examination, and afterwards bitterly complained that he, the Baron of
Plassey, had been treated like a sheep-stealer. The boldness and ingenuousness
of his replies would alone suffice to show how alien from his nature were the
frauds to which, in the course of his Eastern negotiations, he had sometimes
descended. He avowed the arts which he had employed to deceive Omichund, and
resolutely said that he was not ashamed of them, and that, in the same
circumstances, he would again act in the same manner. He admitted that he had
received immense sums from Meer Jaffier; but he denied that, in doing so, he had
violated any obligation of morality or honor. He laid claim, on the contrary,
and not without some reason, to the praise of eminent disinterestedness. He
described in vivid language the situation in which his victory had placed him:
great princes dependent on his pleasure; an opulent city afraid of being given
up to plunder; wealthy bankers bidding against each other for his smiles; vaults
piled with gold and jewels thrown open to him alone. "By God, Mr. Chairman," he
exclaimed, "at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation."
The inquiry was so extensive that the Houses rose before it had been completed.
It was continued in the following session. When at length the committee had
concluded its labors, enlightened and impartial men had little difficulty in
making up their minds as to the result. It was clear that Clive had been guilty
of some acts which it is impossible to vindicate without attacking the authority
of all the most sacred laws which regulate the intercourse of individuals and of
states. But it was equally clear that he had displayed great talents, and even
great virtues; that he had rendered eminent services both to his country and to
the people of India; and that it was in truth not for his dealings with Meer
Jaffier, nor for the fraud which he had practiced on Omichund, but for his
determined resistance to avarice and tyranny, that he was now called in
question.
Ordinary criminal justice knows nothing of set-off. The greatest desert cannot
be pleaded in answer to a charge of the slightest transgression. If a man has
sold beer on a Sunday morning, it is no defense that he has saved the life of a
fellow-creature at the risk of his own. If he has harnessed a Newfoundland dog
to his little child's carriage, it is no defense that he was wounded at
Waterloo. But it is not in this way that we ought to deal with men who, raised
far above ordinary restraints, and tried by far more than ordinary temptations,
are entitled to a more than ordinary measure of indulgence. Such men should be
judged by their contemporaries as they will be judged by posterity. Their bad
actions ought not indeed to be called good; but their good and bad actions ought
to be fairly weighed; and if on the whole the good preponderate, the sentence
ought to be one, not merely of acquittal, but of approbation. Not a single great
ruler in history can be absolved by a judge who fixes his eye inexorably on one
or two unjustifiable acts. Bruce the deliverer of Scotland, Maurice the
deliverer of Germany, William the deliverer of Holland, his great descendant the
deliverer of England, Murray the good regent, Cosmo the father of his country,
Henry the Fourth of France, Peter the Great of Russia, how would the best of
them pass such a scrutiny? History takes wider views; and the best tribunal for
great political cases is the tribunal which anticipates the verdict of history.
Reasonable and moderate men of all parties felt this in Clive's case. They could
not pronounce him blameless; but they were not disposed to abandon him to that
low-minded and rancorous pack who had run him down and were eager to worry him
to death. Lord North, though not very friendly to him, was not disposed to go to
extremities against him. While the inquiry was still in progress, Clive, who had
some years before been created a Knight of the Bath, was installed with great
pomp in Henry the Seventh's Chapel. He was soon after appointed Lord Lieutenant
of Shropshire. When he kissed hands, George the Third, who had always been
partial to him, admitted him to a private audience, talked to him half an hour
on Indian politics, and was visibly affected when the persecuted general spoke
of his services and of the way in which they had been requited.
At length the charges came in a definite form before the House of Commons.
Burgoyne, chairman of the committee, a man of wit, fashion, and honor, an
agreeable dramatic writer, an officer whose courage was never questioned, and
whose skill was at that time highly esteemed, appeared as the accuser. The
members of the administration took different sides; for in that age all
questions were open questions, except such as were brought forward by the
Government, or such as implied censure on the Government. Thurlow, the
Attorney-General, was among the assailants. Wedderburne, the Solicitor-General,
strongly attached to Clive, defended his friend with extraordinary force of
argument and language. It is a curious circumstance that, some years later,
Thurlow was the most conspicuous champion of Warren Hastings, while Wedderburne
was among the most unrelenting persecutors of that great though not faultless
statesman. Clive spoke in his own defense at less length and with less art than
in the preceding year, but with much energy and pathos. He recounted his great
actions and his wrongs; and, after bidding his hearers remember, that they were
about to decide not only on his honor but on their own, he retired from the
House.
The Commons resolved that acquisitions made by the arms of the State belong to
the State alone, and that it is illegal in the servants of the State to
appropriate such acquisitions to themselves. They resolved that this wholesome
rule appeared to have been systematically violated by the English functionaries
in Bengal. On a subsequent day they went a step further, and resolved that Clive
had, by means of the power which he possessed as commander of the British forces
in India, obtained large sums from Meer Jaffier. Here the Commons stopped. They
had voted the major and minor of Burgoyne's syllogism; but they shrank from
drawing the logical conclusion. When it was moved that Lord Clive had abused his
powers, and set an evil example to the servants of the public, the previous
question was put and carried. At length, long after the sun had risen on an
animated debate, Wedderburne moved that Lord Clive had at the same time rendered
great and meritorious services to his country; and this motion passed without a
division.
The result of this memorable inquiry appears to us, on the whole, honorable to
the justice, moderation, and discernment of the Commons. They had indeed no
great temptation to do wrong. They would have been very bad judges of an
accusation brought against Jenkinson or against Wilkes. But the question
respecting Clive was not a party question; and the House accordingly acted with
the good sense and good feeling which may always be expected from an assembly of
English gentlemen, not blinded by faction.
The equitable and temperate proceedings of the British Parliament were set off
to the greatest advantage by a foil. The wretched government of Lewis the
Fifteenth had murdered, directly or indirectly, almost every Frenchman who had
served his country with distinction in the East. Labourdonnais was flung into
the Bastile, and, after years of suffering, left it only to die. Dupleix,
stripped of his immense fortune, and broken-hearted by humiliating attendance in
ante-chambers, sank into an obscure grave. Lally was dragged to the common place
of execution with a gag between his lips. The Commons of England, on the other
hand, treated their living captain with that discriminating justice which is
seldom shown except to the dead. They laid down sound general principles; they
delicately pointed out where he had deviated from those principles; and they
tempered the gentle censure with liberal eulogy. The contrast struck Voltaire,
always partial to England, and always eager to expose the abuses of the
Parliaments of France. Indeed he seems, at this time, to have meditated a
history of the conquest of Bengal. He mentioned his design to Dr. Moore, when
that amusing writer visited him at Ferney. Wedderburne took great interest in
the matter, and pressed Clive to furnish materials. Had the plan been carried
into execution, we have no doubt that Voltaire would have produced a book
containing much lively and picturesque narrative, many just and humane
sentiments poignantly expressed, many grotesque blunders, many sneers at the
Mosaic chronology, much scandal about the Catholic missionaries, and much
sublime theo-philanthropy, stolen from the New Testament, and put into the
mouths of virtuous and philosophical Brahmins.
Clive was now secure in the enjoyment of his fortune and his honors. He was
surrounded by attached friends and relations; and he had not yet passed the
season of vigorous bodily and mental exertion. But clouds had long been
gathering over his mind, and now settled on it in thick darkness. From early
youth he had been subject to fits of that strange melancholy "which rejoiceth
exceedingly and is glad when it can find the grave." While still a writer at
Madras, he had twice attempted to destroy himself. Business and prosperity had
produced a salutary effect on his spirits. In India, while he was occupied by
great affairs, in England, while wealth and rank had still the charm of novelty,
he had borne up against his constitutional misery. But he had now nothing to do,
and nothing to wish for. His active spirit in an inactive situation drooped and
withered like a plant in an uncongenial air. The malignity with which his
enemies had pursued him, the indignity with which he had been treated by the
committee, the censure, lenient as it was, which the House of Commons had
pronounced, the knowledge that he was regarded by a large portion of his
countrymen as a cruel and perfidious tyrant, all concurred to irritate and
depress him. In the meantime, his temper was tried by acute physical suffering.
During his long residence in tropical climates, he had contracted several
painful distempers. In order to obtain ease he called in the help of opium; and
he was gradually enslaved by this treacherous ally. To the last, however, his
genius occasionally flashed through the gloom. It was said that he would
sometimes, after sitting silent and torpid for hours, rouse himself to the
discussion of some great question, would display in full vigor all the talents
of the soldier and the statesman, and would then sink back into his melancholy
repose.
The disputes with America had now become so serious that an appeal to the sword
seemed inevitable; and the Ministers were desirous to avail themselves of the
services of Clive. Had he still been what he was when he raised the siege of
Patna and annihilated the Dutch army and navy at the mouth of the Ganges, it is
not improbable that the resistance of the colonists would have been put down,
and that the inevitable separation would have been deferred for a few years. But
it was too late. His strong mind was fast sinking under many kinds of suffering.
On the twenty-second of November, 1774, he died by his own hand. He had just
completed his forty-ninth year.
In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, the vulgar saw only a
confirmation of all their prejudices; and some men of real piety and genius so
far forgot the maxims both of religion and of philosophy as confidently to
ascribe the mournful event to the just vengeance of God, and to the horrors of
an evil conscience. It is with very different feelings that we contemplate the
spectacle of a great mind ruined by the weariness of satiety, by the pangs of
wounded honor, by fatal diseases, and more fatal remedies.
Clive committed great faults; and we have not attempted to disguise them. But
his faults, when weighed against his merits, and viewed in connection with his
temptations, do not appear to us to deprive him of his right to an honorable
place in the estimation of posterity.
From his first visit to India dates the renown of the English arms in the East.
Till he appeared, his countrymen were despised as mere peddlers, while the
French were revered as a people formed for victory and command. His courage and
capacity dissolved the charm. With the defense of Arcot commences that long
series of Oriental triumphs which closes with the fall of Ghizni. Nor must we
forget that he was only twenty-five years old when he approved himself ripe for
military command. This is a rare if not a singular distinction. It is true that
Alexander, Conde, and Charles the Twelfth, won great battles at a still earlier
age--but those princes were surrounded by veteran generals of distinguished
skill, to whose suggestions must be attributed the victories of the Granicus, of
Rocroi and of Narva. Clive, an inexperienced youth, had yet more experience than
any of those who served under him. He had to form himself, to form his officers,
and to form his army. The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an equally
early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war, was Napoleon Bonaparte.
From Clive's second visit to India dates the political ascendancy of the English
in that country. His dexterity and resolution realized, in the course of a few
months, more than an the gorgeous visions which had floated before the
imagination of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated territory, such an amount
of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was never added to the dominion of
Rome by the most successful proconsul. Nor were such wealthy spoils ever borne
under arches of triumph, down the Sacred Way, and through the crowded Forum, to
the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The fame of those who subdued Antiochus and
Tigranes grows dim when compared with the splendor of the exploits which the
young English adventurer achieved at the head of an army not equal in numbers to
one half of a Roman legion.
From Clive's third visit to India dates the purity of the administration of our
Eastern empire. When he landed in Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a
place to which Englishmen were sent only to get rich, by any means, in the
shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that
gigantic system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he
manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same
sense of justice which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his
earlier days compels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the
reproach of the Company and of its servants has been taken away, if in India the
yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found
lighter than that of any native dynasty, if to that gang of public robbers,
which formerly spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal, has succeeded a
body of functionaries not more highly distinguished by ability and diligence
than by integrity, disinterestedness, and public spirit, if we now see such men
as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious armies, after
making and deposing kings, return, proud of their honorable poverty, from a land
which once held out to every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth, the
praise is in no small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of
conquerors. But it is found in a better list, in the list of those who have done
and suffered much for the happiness of mankind. To the warrior, history will
assign a place in the same rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she deny to
the reformer a share of that veneration with which France cherishes the memory
of Turgot, and with which the latest generations of Hindus will contemplate the
statue of Lord William Bentinck.
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