Rulers of India: Lord Clive Part 9

To return. It will be remembered that in his second administration Clive had purified the Civil Service of Bengal. The corrupt men whom he had ejected had returned to England whilst he was still in India, the charges made against them accompanying or preceding them in the despatches transmitted to the Court of Directors. On receiving these despatches the Court, having taken the opinions of their own lawyers and of those of the Crown, resolved to bring the culprits to trial for having accepted presents from the natives after they had received the order from the Court making such acceptance penal. But the inculpated men were rich and they resolved to appeal from the Directors to the Proprietors. There had been a difference between these two bodies as to whether the annual dividends should be increased from ten, the amount recommended by the Court, to twelve and a half per cent. At the annual meeting the votes of the men dismissed by Clive enabled the Proprietors to carry their point. The corrupt clique utilized this victory by proposing and carrying a resolution that the prosecutions inst.i.tuted against them should be dismissed. This was accordingly done.

{196}Two months later, July 14, Clive landed in England. He was well received. The King and Queen admitted him to private audiences. The Court of Directors received him in full conclave, immediately after his reception by their Majesties, thanked him for his splendid achievements, and immediately convened a general Court to confirm the proposal that the jagir, granted him by Mir Jafar, should be confirmed to him for an additional ten years. This resolution was unanimously pa.s.sed.

So far there was no sign of the coming storm. Not a sound of the distant hurricane had been wafted to the ears of Clive. He had returned as ambitious as he ever had been, resolved to devote to the service of his country the energies he had displayed in the East.

Already he had made arrangements to secure seats for himself and for six of his relatives, when, to rest before the elections should take place, he started for Paris (January, 1768) with Lady Clive and a small party. He was very confident in the future. He had received personally the King's commands to lay before his Majesty his ideas of the Company's affairs both at home and abroad, with a promise of his Majesty's countenance and protection in anything he might attempt for the good of the nation and the Company. He had seen so much of what he called 'the ignorance and obstinacy' of the Court of Directors, who, he stated in a letter to his successor, Mr. Verelst, 'are universally despised and hated,' that he felt sure his would be the hand, in the coming meeting of the Court {197}of Proprietors, to stay their fall or to renew their vitality. In a word, his confidence was never greater, never did he feel more a.s.sured regarding the future.

Yet, during this confidence of the soul, this longing for political warfare, his nearest friends could easily detect that he had not sufficiently recovered from the strain of his last three years in India. His body did not respond to the call of the ever active brain.

His friends and his physicians urged him then to take a complete rest and holiday of fourteen to fifteen months in France. With difficulty they induced him to stay eight months. Then he returned to find that he and his six relatives had, in his absence, been elected Members of Parliament.

His return produced a renewal of the activity of his enemies. They filled London with stories of his rapacity. Sir Robert Fletcher, whose shameful conduct during the mutiny of the officers I have recorded, wrote against him a pamphlet which irritated him greatly.

He was hardly to be prevented from answering it. There were other considerations which, at this time, affected his career. When the general election at which he and his friends were returned had taken place, the Ministry was presided over by the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chatham being Lord Privy Seal and Lord North Chancellor of the Exchequer. At the end of 1769 Chatham was forced by the state of his health, which had long been bad, to resign; and in the January of the year following, the Duke of Grafton resigned and was succeeded as First Lord of the Treasury {198}by Lord North. Clive had not posed as a supporter of either of these administrations. He had declared himself to be a supporter of George Grenville, the head of the Grenville Whigs, who were then in opposition. It has been claimed[2]

for him that Clive declined to commit himself to any party of the Indian policy of which he was ignorant. But none of the members of Lord North's Cabinet knew anything of India, and if Clive, commanding seven votes, had been asked to join it, he might have educated his colleagues on the subject. An opportunity of following such a course seemed to occur when Mr. Wedderburn, an able lawyer and a personal ally of Clive, joined the North Ministry, but Clive remained staunch to the Grenville connexion, exercising but little influence, and exposed all the time to the bitter shafts of his enemies, which increased every day in intensity and venom. To make the situation still less endurable George Grenville died (November, 1770).

[Footnote 2: Malcolm's _Clive_.]

Meanwhile affairs in India were not progressing satisfactorily. In Bengal, indeed, Mr. Verelst, acting on the lines laid down by Clive, had with the support of his colleagues succeeded in maintaining peace and prosperity. But in Madras, the incursions of Haidar Ali, an adventurer who by sheer ability and daring had climbed to the highest place in the kingdom of Mysore, had caused the English in that Presidency severe losses, and forced them to incur an expenditure which deprived the Proprietors of Indian {199}Stock of all chance of dividends for some time to come. To meet this financial embarra.s.sment the Crown and the Company could dream of no other device than the futile one of sending to India three commissioners, who, under the name of Supervisors, should have full power over all the other servants of the Company. They nominated accordingly Mr. Vansittart, who, from having been the warmest friend of Clive, had become his bitterest opponent; and who, but for the successful opposition of Clive and his friends, would have been appointed Governor in succession to Mr. Verelst. With him they a.s.sociated Mr. Scrafton, an old and valued servant of the Company; and Colonel Forde, the conqueror of the Northern Sirkars and of Biderra--both intimate friends and adherents of Clive. These gentlemen sailed in the _Aurora_ frigate in the autumn of 1769. The _Aurora_ reached the Cape in safety, but was never heard of after she had quitted Simon's Bay.

It was supposed that she foundered at sea.

Some considerable time elapsed before it had been realized in England that the Supervisors had failed them, and that it would be necessary to take other measures to remedy existing evils. Meanwhile events had happened which increased the necessity for immediate and effective action. In 1770 the three provinces were visited by a famine exceeding in intensity all the famines of preceding ages. There had been, in years gone by, no beneficent strangers from the West to make, as in later years, provision for the {200}occurrence of so great a calamity. The rains had failed; the water in the tanks had dried up; the rice-fields had become parched and dry. There were but few stores handy to enable the foreigner to disburse the necessary grain. It was the first famine-experience of the English, and they too had made no provision for it. The misery was terrible. The large centres of industry, the only places where there was a chance of obtaining food, became thronged with the dying and the dead. The rivers floating corpses to the sea became so tainted that the very fish ceased to be wholesome food. In summing up, two years later, the effects of the famine on the population, the Governor-General in Council declared that in some places one-half, and, on the whole, one-third of the inhabitants had been destroyed. It need scarcely be added that this terrible calamity affected the Proprietors of East India Stock in a manner, to them the most vital:--it destroyed their prospects of large dividends.

To remedy this evil the brains of the Court of Directors could devise no other scheme than that which the foundering of the _Aurora_ had previously baffled: they would send out other Supervisors. But Lord North had taken the matter in hand. He brought in a bill providing for the const.i.tution in Calcutta of a Supreme Court, to consist of a Chief Justice and three Puisne judges, appointed by the Crown; giving to the Governor of Bengal authority over the two other Presidencies, with the t.i.tle of {201}Governor-General, to be a.s.sisted and controlled by a Council of five members. The great blot of this bill was the clause which gave a controlling power to the Council. The Governor-General had in it but one vote, and in case of equality, a casting-vote. Mr. Warren Hastings who, twelve months before, had succeeded Mr. John Cartier[3] as Governor, was appointed first Governor-General of India.

[Footnote 3: Mr. Cartier had succeeded Mr. Verelst in 1769.]

The war with Haidar Ali and the famine in Bengal had brought India and Indian matters very prominently into the parliamentary discussions of 1771, 1772 and 1773, and during these the name of Lord Clive had not been spared. The attacks against him were led princ.i.p.ally by General Burgoyne, a natural son of Lord Bingley, best known in history as the commander who surrendered a British army, 5,791 strong, to the American colonists.[4] In April, 1772, this officer had become Chairman of a Select Committee composed of thirty-one members, to inquire and report on Indian affairs. Another Committee, called Secret, and composed of thirteen members nominated by ballot, was appointed, on the motion of Lord North, in November of the same year, to take into consideration the whole state of the Company's affairs. Into the other proceedings of these committees this volume has no cause to enter; but they had scarcely been const.i.tuted when they began to let fly their arrows at Lord Clive.

The chief cause of these attacks {202}is so well stated by the sober-minded historian,[5] that I cannot refrain from quoting his remarks. 'Besides the public wrongs of which he (Lord Clive) stood accused, there was also, it may be feared, a feeling of personal envy at work against him. His vast wealth became a more striking mark for calumny when contrasted with the financial embarra.s.sments of the Directors in whose service he had gained it. And his profusion, as ever happens, offended far more persons than it pleased. He had bought the n.o.ble seat of Claremont from the d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of Newcastle, and was improving it at lavish cost. He had so far invested money in the smaller boroughs that he could reckon on bringing into Parliament a retinue of six or seven friends or kinsmen. Under such circ.u.mstances the Select Committee, over which Burgoyne presided, made Clive their more especial object of attack.

They drew forth into the light of day several transactions certainly not well formed to bear it, as the forgery of Admiral Watson's signature, and the fraud practised on Aminchand. But at the same time they could not shut out the l.u.s.tre of the great deeds he had performed. Clive himself was unsparingly questioned, and treated with slight regard. As he complains, in one of his speeches: "I their humble servant, the Baron of Pla.s.sey, have been examined by the Select Committee more like a sheep-stealer than a member of this House." And he adds, with perfect truth: "I am sure, Sir, if I had any sore {203}places about me, they would have been found: they have probed me to the bottom; no lenient plasters have been applied to heal; no, Sir, they were all of the blister kind, prepared with Spanish flies and other provocatives."'

[Footnote 4: At Saratoga, October 17, 1777.]

[Footnote 5: Lord Stanhope's _History of England_, vol. vii. pp.

353-4.]

Throughout these attacks Clive never lost his calmness or his presence of mind. Never once did his lofty spirit quail. He stood there still the unconquered hero, ready to meet every charge, sometimes retorting, but always n.o.bly, on his adversaries. His friends rallied gallantly round him. His particular friend, Mr.

Wedderburn, then Solicitor-General, gave him a support as valuable as it was unstinted. When his administration in Bengal was spoken of by his old enemy, Mr. Sulivan, in the House in a manner which, whilst not directly attacking it, conveyed the impression that there was a great deal more in the background, Clive went through every phase of his career in Bengal, defending his own action in a style which gained for him admiration. It was not, however, until the month of May, 1773, that General Burgoyne defined the vague charges which had theretofore supplied the place of argument, and brought them forward, as a vote of censure, in three resolutions. These resolutions ran as follows: (1) 'that all acquisitions made under the influence of a military force, or by treaty with foreign princes, did of right belong to the State'; (2) 'that to appropriate acquisitions so made to the private emoluments of persons entrusted with any civil or military power {204}of the State is illegal'; (3) 'that very great sums of money, and other valuable property, had been acquired in Bengal from princes and others of that country by persons entrusted with the civil and military powers of the State by means of such powers; which sums of money and valuable property have been appropriated to the private use of such persons.'

These resolutions named n.o.body. But in the speech in which they were introduced Burgoyne took care that there should be no doubt as to the person against whom they were directed. He dwelt, with a bitterness not to be surpa.s.sed, on all the delinquencies, real and imaginary, of the conqueror of Bengal. He traced all the misfortunes which had subsequently happened to the Company to the treasonable compact which had dethroned Siraj-ud-daula and placed Mir Jafar on his seat, and denounced the conduct of the authors of that transaction as 'black perfidy.' He denounced, also, in terms equally severe, the treatment of Aminchand; the forging of the name of Admiral Watson; the agreement, which, he said, had extorted from Mir Jafar enormous sums, under the guise of presents, to the leading servants of the Company in Bengal. On the second administration of Clive, which was really a long struggle against the corruption by which he was surrounded, Burgoyne railed as bitterly and as unsparingly. Nor was he content with merely railing. Before he sat down he declared that if the House should pa.s.s his resolutions he would not stop there, but would proceed to follow them up with others, his {205}object being to compel those who had acquired large sums of money in the manner he had denounced to make a full and complete rest.i.tution.

The Solicitor-General, Wedderburn, conducted the defence for Clive, and it was noticeable that the party styled 'the King's Friends,'

amongst many others, gave him their support. The Attorney-General, Thurlow, supported Burgoyne, and the Prime Minister, Lord North, voted with him. The voting on these resolutions did not, however, indicate the real sense of the House, for many of those who supported them thought it would be better for the cause of Clive that the further resolutions threatened by Burgoyne should be proceeded with in order that a decisive vote should be taken on a motion implicating Clive by name rather than on resolutions of a vague and general character. The resolutions, then, were carried.

Burgoyne then proceeded, as he had promised, to follow up his victory. On the 17th of May he brought forward the following resolution: 'That it appears to this House that the Right Honourable Robert, Lord Clive, Baron of Pla.s.sey, in the kingdom of Ireland, about the time of the deposition of Siraj-ud-daula, and the establishment of Mir Jafar on the _masnad_, through the influence of the powers with which he was entrusted as member of the Select Committee and Commander-in-chief of the British forces, did obtain and possess himself of two lakhs of rupees as Commander-in-chief, a further sum of two lakhs and eighty thousand rupees as member of the Select {206}Committee, and a further sum of sixteen lakhs or more, under the denomination of a private donation, which sums, amounting together to twenty lakhs and eighty thousand rupees, were of value, in English money, of two hundred and thirty-four thousand pounds; and that in so doing the said Robert Clive abused the power with which he was entrusted, to the evil example of the servants of the public, and to the dishonour and detriment of the State.'

No one could say that these charges were not sufficiently pointed.

Clive met them with his accustomed resolution. He rejoiced that the real issue had come at last; that the great jury of the nation, the House of Commons, was, after so long an interval devoted to calumny, to abuse, to vague and shadowy charges, to record its vote on the real question. On their decision on this resolution he would stand or fall. The alternative which his fiercest fights had presented to him, the necessity to conquer or to be disgraced, was presented to him here. He had won those fights by the exercise rather of his lofty moral qualities than by his skill as a soldier, and by the exercise of the same qualities he would win this one also. And he did win it.

After Burgoyne, introducing his resolution, had traversed the same ground he had followed in the preceding resolutions, and had concluded by calling upon the House, like the old Roman heroes, 'to strike when the justice of the State requires it,' Clive rose to defend himself. Recapitulating the services he had rendered, he reminded the {207}House that the transactions in Bengal, upon which Burgoyne relied for a conviction, had been known in their general tenour to the Company and the Crown when they had thanked him, not once but repeatedly, for his services. He proceeded then to expose the interested and revengeful motives of the clique which had instigated the attack, not sparing even those in high places who, from various causes, had allowed themselves to sanction it. Turning from that point, he asked prominent attention to the fact that the India Office, now his accuser, had almost forced him to proceed for the second time to Bengal, and had expressed a deep regret that his health had not allowed him to stay there longer. 'After certificates such as these,' he added, 'am I to be brought here like a criminal, and the very best parts of my conduct construed into crimes against the State?' Stating then that the resolution, if carried, would reduce him to depend on his paternal inheritance of 500 pounds per annum, he continued: 'But on this I am content to live; and perhaps I shall find more real content of mind and happiness than in the trembling affluence of an unsettled fortune. But, Sir, I must make one more observation. If the definition of the hon. gentleman (Colonel Burgoyne) and of this House, that the State, as expressed in these resolutions, is, _quoad hoc_, the Company, then, Sir, every farthing I enjoy is granted to me. But to be called upon, after sixteen years have elapsed, to account for my conduct in this manner, and after an uninterrupted enjoyment of my {208}property, to be questioned, and considered as obtaining it unwarrantably, is hard indeed; it is a treatment I should not think the British Senate capable of. But if such should be the case, I have a conscious innocence within me that tells me my conduct is irreproachable.

_Frangas non flectes._[6] My enemies may take from me what I have; they may, as they think, make me poor, but I shall be happy. I mean not this as my defence, though I have done for the present. My defence will be heard at that bar, but before I sit down I have one request to make to this House: that when they come to decide upon my honour, they will not forget their own.'

[Footnote 6: 'You may break, but you shall not bend, me.']

The debate was adjourned, and in the few days following some witnesses gave evidence at the bar of the House. Lord Clive's evidence, given before the Select Committee, was also read there. In the debate that followed, Mr. Stanley proposed to omit the words inculpating the honour of Clive. Mr. Fuller seconded this amendment, going even further, and striking out the sentence referring to the exercise of undue influence. His suggestion was accepted, and the House proceeded to discuss the amendment as so altered. After a protracted debate the division was called for, when it was found that 155 members had voted for the amendment and 95 against it. This victory stripped Burgoyne's resolutions of all their sting. Vainly did a member of his party attempt to restore the battle by moving that Clive had abused the {209}powers intrusted to him in acting as he avowedly had acted. The House refused to re-open that question.

Finally, at five o'clock in the morning, the House pa.s.sed the following resolution, which consummated the defeat of Burgoyne: 'That Robert, Lord Clive, did, at the same time, render great and meritorious services to his country.' On this conclusion to the violent attacks on Clive, Lord Stanhope, well versed in Parliamentary procedure, thus wrote: 'Such a vote might be deemed almost a verdict of acquittal. Certainly, at least, it showed a wise reluctance to condemn. It closed the whole case, and Clive had no further Parliamentary attack to fear.'

But though the victory was gained, the struggle affecting the personal honour and fortune of a proud and sensitive man had made deep inroads upon the const.i.tution of one who had been long suffering from the acute agony caused by the malady contracted in India. Freed from the attack of his enemies, he might, had his health been only tolerable, have looked forward to a high command in the war just about to break out with the colonists of North America. There he would have been in his place; there, under the influence of constant action, he would have forgotten his troubles; even his oft-recurring spasms might have disappeared. But, after the Parliamentary contest was over, with the waning of the ever-present excitement, his health became worse. In vain did he repair to Bath to try the effect of its waters. In vain, finding that for him the virtues of the Bath waters had {210}departed, did he proceed to the Continent for travel. Rest came not. A complication of disorders prevented sleep, and travel failed to remedy the evil. His mind had no longer the sustaining power which in former days had enabled him to meet with tranquillity the frowns of Fortune. He returned to England in 1774, and shortly afterwards, in November of that year, when apparently thoroughly conscious,[7] fell by his own hand. 'To the last,' wrote Lord Stanhope, 'he appears to have retained his serene demeanour and stern dominion of his will.' It is difficult for us who have followed his career to realise the terrible upsetting of the balance of the great brain which had brought such an act within the bounds of possibility.

[Footnote 7: Lord Stanhope relates a story regarding the manner of Clive's death, told by the Earl of Shelburne, afterwards the first Marquis of Lansdowne, to the person from whom he (Lord Stanhope) received it. 'It so chanced, that a young lady, an attached friend of his (Clive's) family, was then upon a visit at his house in Berkeley Square, and sat writing a letter, in one of its apartments. Seeing Lord Clive walk through, she called him to come and mend her pen.

Lord Clive obeyed her summons, and taking out his penknife fulfilled her request; after which, pa.s.sing on to another chamber, he turned the same knife against himself.']

'Such was the end,' says a French writer, 'of one of the men who did the most for the greatness of England.' That foreign verdict is at least incontestable. Caesar conquered Gaul for his country; Hannibal caused unrest to Rome for nearly a quarter of a century; Wellington drove the French from Portugal and Spain. The achievement of Clive was more splendid than any one of these. He founded for this little island in the {211}Atlantic a magnificent empire; an empire famous in antiquity, renowned since the time of Alexander, whose greatest sovereign had been the contemporary of Queen Elizabeth, more enlightened than any of her predecessors, more tolerant, a more far-sighted statesman even than she. He was, according to Lord Stanhope, emphatically 'a great man.' But he was more than a great man. Like Caius Julius, he united two personalities; he was a great statesman and a great soldier. He was a man of thought as well as a man of action. No administration surpa.s.ses, in the strength of will of the administrator, in excellence of design, in thoroughness of purpose, and, as far as his masters would permit, in thoroughness of action, his second administration of Bengal. No general who ever fought displayed greater calmness in danger, more coolness of brain, than did Clive at Kaveripak, at Samiaveram, at Calcutta, when, on the fog rising, he found himself enveloped by the Subahdar's army, 40,000 strong. Nothing daunted him; nothing clouded his judgement; his decision, the decision of the moment, was always right. In a word, he was a born master of men.

But, says the moralist, he committed faults, and at once the false treaty made with Aminchand is thrown into the face of the historian.

Yes, he did do it; and not only that, he stated in his evidence before the House of Commons that if he were again under the same circ.u.mstances he would do it again. None of his detractors had had the opportunity of judging of {212}the terrible issues which the threatened treachery of Aminchand had opened to his vision. Upon the decision of Clive rested the lives of thousands. To save those lives there appeared to him but one sure method available, and that was to deceive the deceiver. I think his decision was a wrong one, but it should always be remembered that, as Clive stated before the Committee, he had no interested motive in doing what he did do; he did it with the design of disappointing a rapacious man and of preventing the consequences of his treachery. He was in a position of terrible responsibility, and he acted to save others. Let the stern moralist stand in the same position as that in which Clive stood, and it is just possible he might think as Clive thought. At all events, this one fault, for fault it was, cannot or ought not to be set up as a counterweight against services which have given this island the highest position amongst all the nations of the earth. The House of Commons, after a long debate, condoned it. Might not Posterity, the Posterity which has profited by that very fault, be content to follow the lead of the House of Commons? With all his faults, Clive was 'one of the men who did the most for the greatness of England.' That fact is before us every day. His one fault hastened his death, from the handle it gave to the envious and the revengeful, and took from him the chance of gaining fresh laurels in America. May not the ever-living fact of his services induce us to overlook, to blot out from the memory, that one mistake, which he so bitterly expiated in his lifetime?