Rulers of India: Lord Clive by George Bruce Malleson (portable ebook reader .txt) 📕

During his administration of four years in Bengal Clive had been greatly hampered by the contradictory orders he had received from the Court of Directors. In that Court there were four parties: the party of alarmists at the aggrandizement of the Company's possessions in India; the party of progressists; the middle party, composed of men who would retain all that had been conquered, but who, not understanding the necessity which often compels a conqueror to advance that he may retain, would on no account sanction the proceeding of a step further; a fourth party bent only on acquiring plunder. As one or other of these parties obtained preponderance in the Court, so did the orders transmitted to India take their colour. In those days, it must be remembered, there was no Board of Control to regulate and, if necessary, to modify, even entirely to alter, the rulings of the General Court. Thus it was that the agent on the spot, finding the orders from England constantly changing, was driven to rely upon his own judgement, and to act on his own responsibility. This did not signify so much so long as there was, on the spot, holding supreme authority, a Clive or a Warren Hastings. But when the local chief authority was in the hands of men wanting alike in intellect, in high principle, and in nerve, the situation was likely to become dangerous in the extreme.

For the moment, when Clive quitted India, the situation was tranquil. But it might become at any moment the reverse. Therefore it was that Clive had recommended as his successor a man whom he believed he had sounded to the core, and in whom he had found one after his own heart. But there is no proverb more true than that contained in the criticism passed by Tacitus on Galba, 'Omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset.' We shall see presently how the conduct of Vansittart corresponded to this aphorism.

A little more than a year before quitting the shores of Bengal, Clive had addressed to Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, then Secretary of State, a letter (January 7, 1759) in which he had represented the difficulties of the actual situation, and had suggested a mode of dealing with them. He had described the actual Súbahdár as a man attached to the English, and as likely to continue that attachment 'while he has no other support,' but totally uninfluenced by feelings of gratitude, feelings not common to his race. On the other hand, he was advanced in years; his son, Míran, was utterly unworthy, so unworthy 'that it will be almost unsafe trusting him with the succession.' He added immediately, as though prescient of the events which were to follow, 'In case of their,' the native princes, 'daring to be troublesome,' they—a body of 2000 English soldiers—would 'enable the Company to take the sovereignty upon themselves.' After detailing how the transfer would be easy, and palatable, rather than otherwise, to the natives generally, Clive proceeded to represent that so large a sovereignty might possibly be an object too extensive for a mercantile company, and to suggest that it might be worthy of consideration whether the Crown should not take the matter in hand. The points he urged were the following: First, the ease with which the English 'could take absolute possession of these rich kingdoms, and that with the Mughal's own consent, on condition of paying him less than a fifth of the revenues thereof.' There would remain a surplus of two millions, besides most valuable productions of nature and art. He dwelt, secondly, on the influence in Europe which would thereby accrue to England, and the enormous increase of prestige and of the advantages which prestige conveys, on the spot. He added that a small force of European troops would be sufficient, as he could enlist any number of sipáhís, who 'will very readily enter our service.' This letter he transmitted by the hands of Mr. Walsh, his secretary during the campaign of Plassey and the year following, and whom he describes as 'a thorough master of the subject,' 'able to explain to you the whole design and the facility with which it may be executed.'

Mr. Pitt received the letter, but was deterred from acting upon it by difficulties which arose in his mind from his want of knowledge of India and of matters connected with that country. To the son of a man whose father had been Governor of Madras in the days when the English were the humble lessees of the lords of the soil, the proposition to become masters of territories far larger and richer than their island home, seemed beset with difficulties which, if it may be said without disrespect to his illustrious memory, existed solely in his own imagination—for they have since been very easily overcome.

The letter served to make Clive personally known to the great statesman when he landed in England in September or October, 1760. He had returned a very rich man; he was full of ambition; his fame as a soldier had spread all over the kingdom. Pitt, shortly before his arrival (1758), had spoken of him in the House of Commons as a 'Heaven-born General,' as the only officer, by land or sea, who had sustained the reputation of the country and added to its glory. The King himself, George II, when the Commander-in-chief had proposed to him to send the young Lord Dunmore to learn the art of war under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, had replied, 'What can he get by attending the Duke of Brunswick? If he want to learn the art of war, let him go to Clive.' These expressions show at least the temper of the times, the feelings which would inspire the welcome which England would give to her latest hero. And yet the welcome itself fell far short of that which Clive had anticipated. From the Crown there was no immediate recognition; from the Court of Directors, a hostile section of which held the supremacy, he received worse than neglect. Almost their first act was to dispute his right to the jágír which Mír Jafar had bestowed upon him.1 From the general public there was no demonstration. Clive felt that in England as in India he would have to fight his way upwards.

His health was not very good. He suffered from rheumatism, which had assailed him in Bengal, and which bore a strong resemblance to rheumatic gout. Scarcely had he recovered from this malady when he was assailed by the insidious disease which, afterwards, but rarely left him. This caused a depression of spirits which gradually wore out his body. As a boy he had suffered at intervals from similar attacks. They increased now in intensity, baffling the physicians who attended him. He bore up bravely, however, and pushed forward with his wonted energy the ambitious plans he had formed in the intervals of quiet and repose.

At the age of thirty-five, with an enormous fortune, great ambition, and sanguine hopes for the future, Clive trusted that the illness he suffered from would eventually yield to treatment, and he entered on his campaign in England with the confidence in himself which had been one secret of his success in India. He had hoped, on his arrival, to have been at once raised to the House of Peers. But the honours of the Crown, long delayed, took the shape only of an Irish peerage. With this he was forced to be content, and, being debarred from the Upper House, made all his arrangements to become a member of the Lower. He speedily obtained a seat in that House.

Possibly he marred his prospects by the line which he took in politics. In October, 1760, George II had died. The new King, whose proudest boast was that he had been born an Englishman, made Lord Bute Secretary of State. Soon after Pitt resigned, because the rest of the Ministry refused to support him in his policy of going to war with Spain, the Duke of Newcastle still remaining nominal head of the Cabinet. In 1762 the Duke resigned, and Lord Bute became Prime Minister. Sir John Malcolm states that Lord Clive was offered his own terms if he would support the Bute Ministry. But Clive had given his mental adhesion in another quarter, and therefore refused his support, and was, it is stated, treated coldly in consequence.2