FOOTNOTES:
[130] These statues were executed by Scheemaker, and placed, Pocock's in the centre, over the Chairman's seat, Clive's on the right hand, in an advanced and speaking attitude, and Lawrence's on the left. The statues are larger than life, and in the Roman costume.
[131] Clive's letter to Orme, 29th September, 1765.
[132] 1764.
[133] 9th December, 1765.
[134] Letter to Lord Clive, 17th May, 1766.
[135] 26th September, 1766.
[136] 6th May, 1767.
[137] The preceding narrative is chiefly extracted from notes of Sir Henry Strachey on the subject.
[138] 30th July, 1766.
[139] Letter, 22d November, 1766.
[140] Also a member of the Administration.
[141] 25th November, 1766.
[142] 4th March, 1767.
[143] Letter to Lord Clive, 4th March, 1767.
[144] 30th December, 1766.
[145] 12th June.
[146] 29th June, 1767.
[147] 6th May.
[148] 18th March, 1767.
[149] 25th March, 1767.
[150] 23d September, 1767.
[151] Letter, 2d October.
[152] Letter, dated Thursday, apparently 1st October.
[153] Letter, dated Walcot, 6th October, 1767.
[154] Letter to Harry Verelst, Esq., dated Bath, 7th November, 1767.
[155] Paris, 9th February, 1768.
[156] Letter to Mr. Beecher, dated Montpelier, 3d March, 1768.
[157] Letter, dated Wotton, 28th May, 1769.
[158] Defect in the MS.
[159] Letter, dated 10th February, 1769.
[160] 10th February, 1769.
[161] 5th March, 1769.
[162] 22d December, 1769.
[163] 8th April, 1771.
[164] 5th March, 1769.
[165] This letter fills forty-eight pages, and is a very curious and valuable document in Indian history.
[166] 12th November, 1768.
[167] Clive, in many of his letters, warns those who were placed in offices of trust against that easy good-nature which can find its proper place only in private life. Writing to Sir Robert Barker, one of the friends whom he most valued (8th October, 1766), in answer to a letter which contained some remonstrances on certain opinions which he was said to have expressed, he remarks, "The part I have acted towards you ought to have precluded every suspicion injurious to the sufficiency of your abilities, or to the integrity of your conduct, and shown that my doubts (if they can be so called) of your not at all times acting up to your character and station, could only proceed from the knowledge I have of your great good-nature and mildness of disposition,—qualities which though amiable in private life, have ever some ascendency over the dictates of reason, and will sometimes, in public life, enervate even the principle and spring of action."
While Lord Clive was every day more and more desirous of disengaging himself from the vexatious and unsatisfactory annoyances of Leadenhall Street politics, yet unwilling to forsake altogether the means which they afforded him of promoting the interest of his friends, and of influencing beneficially the government of our Indian empire, as to the fate of which it was impossible that he could be indifferent, the progress of events drew him once more conspicuously forward on the stage of public life, and desperate attempts were made to ruin at once his fortune and his reputation. It was his fate to suffer, not for his vices or errors, but for his virtues. His upright and honourable discharge of his painful duties, during his second government of Bengal, was at the root of all the persecutions which he afterwards endured. The men whom he made his enemies, by a firm yet temperate exercise of authority, resolved, if they could not justify their own conduct, to embitter, to the utmost of their power, the feelings of the statesman who had disturbed them in the career of unlawful gain. They had attempted to injure him in the courts at the India House. The changes in public affairs now enabled them to point an attack against him on a larger theatre, in the British Parliament.
We have seen that the rumours of the boundless wealth of India, the extent of the provinces conquered, and the amount of the revenue acquired, had raised the question to whom those conquests belonged,—to the trading company that had made them, or to the country and sovereign under whose auspices they were made? and that, to prevent the decision of this question, for which neither party was perfectly prepared, a compromise had been entered into between Government and the Directors, in 1767, and afterwards renewed. But disasters and mismanagement in India and at home had, in the course of a few years, reduced the Company's affairs to such distress that, far from being able to pay the sum stipulated, it became very problematical if they would be able to discharge their ordinary debts. The Directors were willing to throw the blame on their servants abroad, whom they charged for acting contrary to their orders; while they, on their part, defended themselves as they best could from the imputations cast upon them. Reports of oppression in India were widely circulated; and the private fortunes rapidly accumulated, that were every day brought home from that country (fortunes large in themselves and exaggerated by report), were held by many sufficiently to prove the truth of the charges.
The British Ministry, at that moment, contained no man of extraordinary talent, and its members were averse to any extensive views of civil polity: besides, they had their hands too full of American affairs, and of internecine quarrels, which ran very high, to leave them any wish to launch into the wide ocean of Indian concerns, of which, in common with all the rest of the nation, they were profoundly ignorant. At the same time, the progress of events made it necessary that something should be attempted. So early as May, 1771, the Ministers, who were aware that from no individual could so much and so sound information and advice be received as from Lord Clive, had shown a desire to confer with him. As he had always been a steady supporter of the politics of Mr. Grenville, who had long been in opposition, he was not then in habits of personal communication with any of the leading members of the Government. To obviate this difficulty recourse was had to Mr. Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General and Lord Clive's personal friend, who wrote him a letter[168], in which he observes, "There are no public news in town. We had a little mobbing last night[169], but not to any great excess. My neighbour, the Speaker, had his windows mauled exceedingly; but, by great good fortune, the gentlemen were so busy with his that they left mine untouched.
"Lord Rochford[170], a few days ago, desired that I would ask your Lordship if you would allow him to talk over Indian affairs with you. He says that it is his duty to bestow more attention than has hitherto been employed upon an object of the utmost consequence to the nation, and that he wishes to improve or to form his ideas from your conversation. I told him it was uncertain when you would return to town; but I was persuaded, your zeal for the public service would incline you to assist Government with your advice, whenever that subject was taken into serious consideration. I believe the answer was such as your Lordship would have wished me to make; and I must do him the justice to say, he held a very proper language upon the subject of India, and seemed to feel the importance of it."
Lord Clive, in his answer[171], observes, "I am happy to find Lord Rochford thinks so justly of the importance of our possessions in the East Indies; and yet in these times of (discord) and confusion, much, I fear, cannot be expected from his laudable endeavours to benefit the public by securing and improving our acquisitions in those parts. When I returned to England in the year 1767, my thoughts were much taken up with the flattering prospect of assisting Government to complete a work which I had only begun; and I intimated as much to the King in a private audience which I was honoured with soon after my arrival; but a tedious and severe illness prevented me from carrying my ideas into execution, and afforded me leisure for reflection. The result was, that I soon perceived that unless a settled administration, possessed of both resolution and power adequate to the object, undertook thoroughly to engage Parliament in the business, no material advantage could be obtained for the nation by any light I could give. After my recovery, I had many conversations with Mr. Grenville upon the subject, who, to the last, was of the same way of thinking. Mr. Strachey has, with the materials I have furnished him, undertaken that task; but I think he cannot complete the work in less than eighteen months. You are acquainted with my design of going to the Spa, and spending the next winter in Italy. I can only be in London a few days at the latter end of July. If that time should be convenient to Lord Rochford, and he will signify his pleasure by a few lines, I shall be ready to pay my respects to his Lordship, and give him all the verbal information in my power."
A severe return of ill health seems to have prevented Lord Clive from visiting the Spa, and, probably, from meeting Lord Rochford. But the continuation of unfavourable reports from India, and the approaching meeting of Parliament, made the Ministers more desirous than ever of some communication of opinions with him. The Solicitor-General accordingly wrote his Lordship the following letter:—
"My dear Lord,
"I have been confined to the house since my arrival in town, by a cold, till this morning, that I was obliged to go to Lord North's. As soon as the business which brought me to him was finished, he began upon the subject of the East Indies; to which, he said, the attention of Administration was now very seriously turned. He seemed to feel strongly the necessity of taking some steps immediately for the preservation of so important an object, and the difficulty of forming any proper measure for that purpose. From the tenor of the conversation it appeared to me that no idea had as yet presented itself that could be the foundation of any plan; and he expressed the strongest wish to receive that instruction upon the subject which your Lordship alone can give him. I took it upon me to say that your Lordship had never given any Administration reason to think that you would decline doing that service to the public, but that you had never been called upon; nor had it ever appeared to be an object of real attention to Government. He seemed very desirous that I should acquaint you how much it was now become the object of their most earnest attention, and that it would give him the utmost satisfaction to be able to form his own ideas upon yours. I did not undertake the commission with so much frankness as I should have done, if it had been only to go from Downing Street to Berkeley Square; and this evening I received the enclosed letter, which I was desired to convey to your Lordship.
"From Lord North's I went to Lord Rochford, who took up the same subject, and, as his manner is, with more eagerness than the other. He desired me to tell your Lordship, that he had employed himself in forming a Précis of the Indian affairs, which he wished to communicate to you; that he was convinced you thought alike with him as to the evils that now subsist, and that you knew, much better than he could, what were the proper remedies for them.
"I have related to you, as shortly as I could, the purport of two pretty long conversations, to which I can add very little of my own observation, having scarcely seen any body till this morning; except that I understand a great many plans are forming by different people upon this subject, which, it is generally supposed, must, in some manner, be taken up this winter. I heard of no specific proposition that had been mentioned to Government, in either of my conversations, except the old one of a Triennial Direction, which, to be sure, by itself, will not mend the matter very much. It is now certain, what you always supposed, that the Duc de Choiseuil had determined[172] to begin his attack in the East Indies, and the blow would have been struck at Bengal.
"It might seem odd if I omitted to say to your Lordship, upon the former part of my letter, that I am very much persuaded, both the ministers I have seen, and particularly the last, will pursue any plan you point out. I have had other conversations with him formerly, upon the general state of Indian affairs, and his ideas seem to coincide very much with yours. Lord North seems to be quite open upon the subject, and as he has no prejudice to bias him, I should form the same conclusion with regard to him.
"Lincoln's Inn Fields,
29th Oct. 1771."
On the 14th of November Mr. Wedderburn writes to Lord Clive: "I delivered your Lordship's letter to L.N., who seemed to be extremely happy by the manner in which you received his application. From the inquiries which he made about your engagements in the country, I imagine he is very desirous of seeing you in town. But that matter rests more properly with him, and I only said I was very sure you would be very ill pleased to be brought up to no purpose. The other Lord is in the country this week, but returns on Monday next. I should conjecture that his ideas are more forward upon the affairs of the East than your correspondent's. I am told that the Directors have compromised the affair of the tea-duties with the Treasury; but they have not done me the honour to acquaint me upon what terms, though in the outset of the business, I had some share in bringing about an agreement for the Company. There seems to be a good deal of ill-humour at present against the Directors, which they may feel the effects of, if the alarm at the present state of affairs in India is not quieted soon."
The party then in power among the Directors was hostile to Lord Clive, who for several years, chiefly by the weight of his personal influence, had excluded them from office. Mr. Sulivan, who was their leader, and some others, bore him the most rancorous personal animosity. It is not improbable that they had heard of the communication thus opened between Lord Clive and the Ministers, and that considering it as pregnant with consequences prejudicial to their own interests, they resolved to take some decided step to palsy the effects of his authority in the discussions that were approaching. Perhaps the slight paid to Mr. Wedderburn, and alluded to in the foregoing extract, may be traced to his intimacy with Lord Clive, or even to his supposed agency in bringing about a meeting with the Ministers.
However that may be, just a fortnight before the meeting of Parliament, Lord Clive, without having had any previous communication made to him on the part of the Directors, received a dry official letter[173] from the Company's Secretary, informing him that the Court of Directors had lately received several papers containing charges respecting the management of the Company's affairs in Bengal, wherein his Lordship was made a party; enclosing copies of them, and acquainting his Lordship, that if he had any observations to make, the Court of Directors would be glad to receive them as expeditiously as might be convenient for his Lordship.
Lord Clive, on perusing these charges, which were anonymous, at once perceived the purpose for which they were thus seasonably made and communicated. In his answer, which he addressed to the Court of Directors, he remarks,—"You have not been pleased to inform me from whom you received these papers, to what end they were laid before you, what resolution you have come to concerning them, nor for what purpose you expect my observations upon them.
"I shall, however, observe to you, that upon the public records of the Company, where the whole of my conduct is stated, you may find a sufficient confutation of the charges which you have transmitted to me; and I cannot but suppose, that if any part of my conduct had been injurious to the service, contradictory to my engagements with the Company, or even mysterious to you, four years and a half since my arrival in England would not have elapsed before your duty would have impelled you to call me to account."
The charges were those which he afterwards enumerated and repelled in his speech in the House of Commons on the 30th of March following.
The resolution of Ministers to call the public attention to Indian affairs was sufficiently indicated in the Speech from the Throne[174], in which the affairs of the East India Company were plainly alluded to. "The concerns of this country," his Majesty was made to say, "are so various and extensive, as to require the most vigilant and active attention; and some of them, as well from remoteness of place as from other circumstances, are so peculiarly liable to abuses and exposed to danger, that the interposition of the Legislature for their protection may become necessary. If in any such instances, either for supplying defects or remedying abuses, you shall find it requisite to provide any new laws, you may depend upon my ready concurrence in whatever may best contribute to the attainment of these salutary ends." Mr. Vane, who seconded the Address in the House of Commons, insisted that the malversation of the East India Company's servants called loudly for interposition; that new laws and regulations were become necessary; that at present the Company had not sufficient powers over their servants to enforce obedience to their orders, or to prevent them from accumulating enormous fortunes at the expense of their masters; and that their exorbitances in other respects might, in their consequences, occasion the entire loss of those distant dominions to Great Britain. The subject was not, however, immediately taken up by any Member, and some time passed without any further reference to that part of his Majesty's Speech.
But it was not dropped. On the 30th March, Mr. Sulivan, who was then Deputy Chairman of the Court of Directors, moved for leave to bring in a bill "for the better regulation of the affairs of the East India Company, and of their servants in India, and for the due administration of justice in Bengal." He said that the object of the bill was to restrain the Governor and Council from all trade; and to establish a proper mode of administering justice, by extending the authority of the Court of Justice at Calcutta over all Bengal. It was alleged by those who supported the motion, that the bad state of our affairs in India was owing to the little power which the Court of Directors had to punish their servants, either for disobedience of orders, or for malpractices in the country; that the power of trading that had been granted to the Governors, when we had mere factories on the sea-coast, was no longer suitable to their duties, now that they were called upon to govern our wide and important dominions; that their interests and duties had become inconsistent; and that the system for the administration of public justice in Bengal was quite insufficient for its objects: and, in the course of the debates, many reflections were cast out, and charges made or insinuated, against former Governors of the country. On the other hand, it was contended that inquiry should precede legislation; that the House was not in possession of facts to guide it aright; that inquiry would probably show that the evils were too deep-seated to be remedied by the proposed bill; and, especially, that the Court of Directors, and the General Courts of Proprietors, were themselves much to blame for many of the evils complained of; that the sending out a few persons, learned in the laws of England, as judges, to such a country, was quite inadequate to the end in view; above all, as it was not yet determined by what laws the inhabitants were to be governed.[175]
Many of the most important changes in the bill had long before been suggested by Lord Clive to the Company. But he disapproved of others of its details, and still more of the arguments by which it was supported. He had long been an object of attack and hostility to those by whom the bill was introduced. The late communication from the Court of Directors left him no doubts of their feelings; and, as he saw himself not obscurely aimed at, both in the motion and in the speeches in support of it, he took occasion to enter into a long justification of his conduct from the charges that had been recently brought against him. These charges were known to the public; and he wished to take the most public and solemn mode of answering them.
"It is with great diffidence," said he, "that I attempt to speak to this House; but I find myself so particularly called upon, that I must make the attempt, though I should expose myself in so doing. With what confidence can I venture to give my sentiments upon a subject of such national consequence, who myself stand charged with having been the cause of the present melancholy situation of the Company's affairs in Bengal? This House can have no reliance on my opinion, whilst such an impression remains unremoved. The House will, therefore, give me leave to remove this impression, and to endeavour to restore myself to that favourable opinion which, I flatter myself, they entertained of my conduct before these charges were exhibited against me. Nor do I wish to lay my conduct before the members of this House only; I speak, likewise, to my country in general, upon whom I put myself, not only without reluctance, but with alacrity."
After mentioning the critical and dangerous situation of the Company's affairs, when in 1764 he was called upon, by a General Court, to leave his family and the enjoyment of wealth and ease, to take upon himself the management of their affairs in a distant and unhealthy climate (an undertaking in which he engaged from a point of honour, and from a principle of gratitude), he observes, that on his arrival in Bengal he found his powers disputed by the Council; that in the discharge of his difficult duty three paths lay before him: the first, to take the government as he found it, and carry it on upon the same principles; by which he might have returned to England with an immense fortune, but condemned by justice and honour: the second, to have given up the commonwealth, and to have left Bengal without an effort to save it. "The third path," says he, "was intricate. Dangers and difficulties were on every side. But I resolved to pursue it. In short, I was determined to do my duty to the public, although I should incur the odium of the whole settlement. The welfare of the Company required a vigorous exertion, and I took the resolution of cleansing the Augean stable.
"It was this conduct," he exclaims, with truth and boldness, "which has occasioned the public papers to teem with scurrility and abuse against me, ever since my return to England. It was that conduct which occasioned these charges. It was that conduct which enables me now to lay my hand upon my heart, and most solemnly to declare to this House, to the gallery, and to the whole world at large, that I never, in a single instance, lost sight of what I thought the honour and true interest of my country and the Company; that I was never guilty of any acts of violence or oppression, unless the bringing offenders to justice can be deemed so; that as to extortion, such an idea never entered into my mind; that I did not suffer those under me to commit acts of violence, oppression, or extortion; that my influence was never employed for the advantage of any man, contrary to the strictest principles of honour and justice; and that, so far from reaping any benefit myself from the expedition, I returned to England many thousand pounds out of pocket,—a fact of which this House will presently be convinced."
He then entered into a detail of the charges themselves, and of the strange way in which they had been communicated to him by the Directors. The charges, it appears, were four. The first was, a monopoly of cotton. "Trade," says he, "was not my profession. My line has been military and political. I owe all I have in the world to my having been at the head of an army; and as to cotton, I know no more about it than the Pope of Rome."
The second charge was for a monopoly of diamonds. He observes, that at that period there were only two ways by which a servant of the Company could, with propriety, remit his fortune to England; by bills on the Company, or by diamonds: that, in consequence of his own successful endeavours, the Company's treasury was so rich, that it did not receive money for such bills: that he, therefore, sent an agent into a distant and independent country to purchase diamonds, that he might be able to remit the amount of his jaghire. "These diamonds," says he, "were not sent home clandestinely. I caused them to be registered; I paid the duties upon them; and these remittances, upon the whole, turned out 3 per cent. worse than bills of exchange upon the Company. This is all I know of a monopoly of diamonds."
The third charge was, frauds in the exchange, and in the gold coinage. This, he said, was a subject very much out of his sphere, as he was totally unacquainted with the proportion of alloy and the mixture of metals. That the Select Committee was apprehensive of the country being drained of silver, and, knowing that there was much gold in different quarters, hoped to make it circulate as coin. "Hence the establishment of the gold currency," he continues. "Whether it answered our purpose or not, I cannot say, as I did not remain in Bengal long enough to experience the effect of it; but this I know, that the assay and mint-master, by whose judgment we were guided, was a very able and a very honest man, and has, I understand, given a full and satisfactory explanation of his plan to the Court of Directors. With regard to myself, I shall only assert, that I did not receive a farthing advantage from it, and that I never sent a single rupee or gold mohur to be coined in my life.
"The fourth charge has this extraordinary title, 'A monopoly of salt, betle-nut, and tobacco, and other commodities, which occasioned the late famine.' How a monopoly of salt, betle-nut, and tobacco, in the years 1765 and 1766 could occasion a want of rain and scarcity of rice in the year 1770, is past my comprehension. I confess I cannot answer that part of this article; and as to the other commodities, as they have not been specified, I cannot say any thing to them." He then entered into an explanation regarding the monopoly of salt, its origin, objects, and effects, and defended his conduct and that of the Select Committee in every circumstance, ascribing the opposition which their measures met with to ignorance, prejudice, and mistaken views. He contended that, in the circumstances of the country, it was the only fund left for adequately paying the higher servants; that it was faithfully and judiciously applied to that purpose; and that it was attended with no injury or increase of taxation to the people, who, by the plan of the society, were to receive it at as moderate a rate as they had ever done in former times. Finally, he showed that he had strictly conformed to a resolution made before leaving England,—not to return in any degree enriched by his expedition to India; and for that purpose had exhibited the state of his whole receipts as Governor, including his share in the Society of Trade, as well as his expenditure; by which it appeared, that of the proceeds one portion was divided among Mr. Maskelyne, Mr. Strachey, and Mr. Ingham, three gentlemen who had accompanied him to India, the two latter his private secretary and family surgeon; and all the residue applied in part payment of his necessary expenses as Governor; and that, so far from returning home with any pecuniary benefits, he had really incurred a loss of 5,816l. 16s. 9d.
As insinuations had been used regarding his conduct in acquiring the property which he had devoted to establish a fund for relief of the Company's disabled officers and soldiers, and their widows,—a subject which, he remarks, he would have been ashamed to touch on, as carrying with it an appearance of vanity, were not his honour and reputation so much at stake,—he proceeded to show, that, by the opinions of the first lawyers in England, and, among others, of the Speaker of the House, his acceptance of the legacy of Meer Jaffier in no respect interfered with any of his covenants or engagements; that the amount was his own sole and indisputable property; and that the Court of Directors acknowledged, confirmed, and acted upon that right: in short, that the donation which he had made for improving the Company's military service, so far from being an object of blame, was a free gift of upwards of 70,000l. out of his private purse.
Having thus triumphantly concluded his defence against the charges that referred more immediately to himself, he expressed a fear of encroaching on the patience of the House, in what he had to say on the important business more immediately before them; but was loudly called upon to go on. He then took a view of the general accusations brought against the Company's servants; accusations in which the Court of Directors had loudly joined. The justice of many of these he did not deny, but argued that the offences arose in general less from the characters of the individuals, to which they had been ascribed, than from the unfortunate circumstances of their situation, which exposed them to temptations that it was nearly impossible for human nature to resist: that a change of system was the remedy, and that that must proceed from the Court of Directors and the Government: that in the richest country in the world, where the power of the English had become absolute, where no inferior approached his superior but with a present in his hand, where there was not an officer commanding his Majesty's fleet, nor an officer commanding his Majesty's army, nor a Governor, nor a member of Council, nor any other person, civil or military, in such a station as to have connection with the country Government, who had not received presents, it was not to be expected that the inferior officers should be more scrupulous. The abuses to which, in a country containing fifteen millions of inhabitants, a revenue of 4,000,000l., and trade in proportion, such a practice gave rise, he described in the liveliest terms; as well as the artifices by which the wily native gradually draws on the inexperienced and unthinking youth, on his first arrival in the country, till he gets him in his power: and to the natives, protected by such men, he ascribes the acts of violence and oppression that had been committed; not to the masters, who were for the most part ignorant of them. He reminded the House that as to the conduct of these young men, on whom the Directors were desirous of shifting the blame, neither their parents nor the Directors themselves were guiltless. "The advantages arising from the Company's service," said he, "are now very generally known, and the great object of every man is to get his son appointed a writer to Bengal, which is usually at the age of sixteen. His parents and relations represent to him how certain he is of making a fortune; that my Lord Such-a-one and my Lord Such-a-one acquired so much money in such a time, and Mr. Such-a-one and Mr. Such-a-one so much in such a time. Thus are their principles corrupted at their very setting out; and, as they generally go a good many together, they inflame one another's expectations to such a degree, in the course of the voyage, that they fix upon a period for their return, before their arrival." After describing the career of luxury and extravagance into which they are seduced by their artful banyan[176], who takes advantage of the influence he acquires to commit acts of violence and oppression, he adds, "Hence Sir, arises the clamour against the English gentlemen in India. But look at them in a retired situation, when returned to England, when they are no longer nabobs and sovereigns of the East: see if there be any thing tyrannical in their dispositions towards their inferiors; see if they are not good and humane masters. Are they not charitable? Are they not benevolent? Are they not generous? Are they not hospitable? If they are, thus far, not contemptible members of society, and if in all their dealings between man and man their conduct is strictly honourable, ... may we not conclude, that if they have erred, it has been because they were men placed in situations subject to little or no control?...
"But if the servants of the Company are to be loaded with the demerit of every misfortune in India, let them also have the merit they are entitled to. The Court of Directors, surely, will not claim the merit of those advantages which the nation and the Company are at present in possession of. The officers of the navy and army have had great share in the execution; but the Company's servants were the Cabinet Council who planned every thing, and to them also may be ascribed some part of the merit of our great acquisitions."
After having shown that the system was more to blame than the men, that much of the defect of regulation and control which rendered abuses inevitable in India was owing to the very persons who were loudest in their complaints, he next turned the attention of the House to the state of India itself; a country which, he affirmed, yielded a clear produce to the public and to individuals of between two and three millions sterling per annum. He asked what could be substituted for this, were it lost; and pointed to the dangers it actually ran, during a recent difference with the French Court. But it was certain, that our affairs in Bengal were in a very deplorable condition. This he ascribed to mismanagement. The public trade he showed, from official returns, to have more than doubled since the acquisition of the dewannee; while the inland trade, upon which the happiness and prosperity of the people must chiefly depend, had, by a change of system, and under pretence of freedom of trade, been thrown into total confusion, as the Company's servants and their agents had in reality taken it into their own hands, and, by trading not only as merchants but as sovereigns, had taken the bread out of the mouth of thousands of native merchants, whom they reduced to beggary. By official returns he proved that, since the acquisition of the dewannee, the revenues had suffered but a very inconsiderable decrease; while in every year since he left Bengal there had been a rapid increase in the military and civil charges, which threatened to consume the whole of the collections, and leave no surplus whatever. "Here," says he truly, "lies the danger. The evil is not so much in the revenues falling short, as in the expenses increasing. The best means of raising the revenues is to reduce the civil and military charges.... It is not the simple pay of officers and men upon the civil and military establishment which occasions our enormous expense, but the contingent bills of contractors, commissaries, engineers, &c., out of which, I am sure, great savings might be made.... Every man now, who is permitted to make a bill, makes a fortune. These intolerable expenses have alarmed the Directors, and persuaded them to come to Parliament for assistance. And, if I mistake not, they will soon go to the Administration and tell them they cannot pay the 400,000l., and that they must lower the dividends to the Proprietors."
The distressed state of the Company's affairs he attributed to four causes:—a relaxation of Government in his successors; great neglect on the part of his Majesty's Administration; notorious misconduct on the part of the Directors; and the violent and outrageous proceedings of General Courts, including contested elections.
While he bestowed the highest and most merited praise on Mr. Verelst's honour, worth, and disinterestedness, he asserts that the too great tenderness of his disposition had made him govern with too lenient a hand; that he himself, by his farewell letter to the Select Committee, had done all in his power to guard him against this error, and to prompt him to vigorous measures. But he adds, that had his successor kept the tightest rein, he could not have done much service to the Company, as neither he nor any man could have long guarded against the mischiefs occasioned by the Directors themselves, when they took away the powers of the Select Committee.
Nor was the Administration itself free from blame. When the Company had acquired an empire more extensive than any kingdom in Europe, France and Russia excepted, with 4,000,000l. of gross revenue, and trade in proportion, it might have been expected that such acquisitions would have invited the most serious attention of Ministers, and that some plan would have been devised, in concert with the Court of Directors, adequate to the occasion. Did they take it into consideration? "No, they did not."—"They thought of nothing but the present time, regardless of the future; they said, 'Let us get what we can to-day; let to-morrow take care for itself:' they thought of nothing but the immediate division of the loaves and fishes: nay, so anxious were they to lay their hands upon some immediate advantage, that they actually went so far as to influence a parcel of temporary proprietors to bully the Directors into their terms. It was their duty, Sir, to have called upon the Directors for a plan; and if a plan in consequence had not been laid before them, it would then have become their duty, with the aid and assistance of Parliament, to have formed one themselves. If Administration had done their duty, we should not now have had a speech from the throne intimating the necessity of Parliamentary interposition, to save our possessions in India from impending ruin."
He next proceeded to animadvert on the misconduct of the Directors, who after having, in the highest terms, applauded the conduct of the Select Committee, who had extricated their affairs from anarchy and confusion, and raised them to a degree of prosperity never before enjoyed nor anticipated, had counteracted the beneficial effects of their exertions by dropping the prosecutions against those gentlemen whose conduct the Committee had censured: that from that instant they destroyed their own power; their servants abroad looked upon all covenants as so many sheets of blank paper; and then began that relaxation of Government so much complained of, and so much to be dreaded. That this step they followed up by destroying the powers of the Committee, by dividing them between the Committee and Council. The natural consequence was an uninterrupted series of disputes, to the detriment of the service. That not content with this, the Court restored almost every civil and military transgressor who had been dismissed. "And now," continued his Lordship, "as a condemnation of their own conduct, and a tacit confession of their own weakness, they come to Parliament with a bill of regulations, in which is inserted a clause to put such practices as much as possible out of their power for the future."
He lastly censured the violent proceedings of General Courts, as concurring with the acts of the Directors, in removing all dread of responsibility from their servants abroad. He argued, that the whole of these evils were aggravated by the system of annual elections; that one half of the year was employed by the Directors in freeing themselves from the obligations contracted by their last election; and the second half wasted in incurring new obligations, and securing their election for the next year, by daily sacrifices of some interest of the Company. The orders sent out had, in consequence of the unsettled state of the Direction, been so fluctuating, that the servants (who say the truth have generally understood the interest of the Company much better than the Directors,) in many instances followed their own opinion, in opposition to theirs.
He concluded a speech of singular power and intelligence by observing, that it was not his intention to trouble the House, at that time, with the remedies for these evils. He chose rather to defer them till the bill came into the House.[177]
He was followed by Governor Johnstone, who opposed the bill on the reasonable ground that an examination of facts should precede legislation, and that it was necessary to hear evidence before forming any conclusion on subjects so important. He entered into an examination of the defence which Lord Clive had just made of his conduct. In regard to the two first charges, he acknowledged that they originated in the clumsy manner in which business was done at the India House; that the first was meant to be confined to particular members of the Council; and that the second was not meant as a charge, but as illustrating another point. He contended, however, in vehement terms, that in regard to the fourth charge, that of the Salt Company, his Lordship had violated his duty, and disobeyed the strong and repeated orders of the Court of Directors, and that the monopoly had been attended with the most injurious consequences to the country; that as to the proportion of the profits which came to him as Governor, it was no excuse for receiving them to allege, that they had been distributed among his friends and dependants. In regard to the gold coinage, he urged that it was not enough that Lord Clive had derived no benefit from it (though indeed, as Governor, he had received a per centage on the coinage); that it was a duty of his station to become acquainted with principles so important to the prosperity of those he governed; that his receipt of the per centage of one and an eighth on the revenues, in lieu of the advantages resulting from his share in the Society of Trade, however sanctioned by the Directors, was illegal. He next attacked the legacy of Meer Jaffier, the basis of the celebrated bounty, and declared his opinion that the foundation of the large establishments and increased expenditure which, since Lord Clive left India, had brought the Company's affairs to the verge of ruin, had been laid during his government, and under his advice. Nearly the whole of the speech was an attack on Lord Clive, on the same subjects, and conveyed in the same violent language to which he had already so often given vent during the contests in the Court of Proprietors.[178]
Leave was given to introduce the bill.
Nearly three months had elapsed since the allusion to India in the Royal Speech, and Ministers, during that time, had shown no disposition to take the matter into their own hands, as such a reference seemed to promise. They were not prepared for a measure of such importance, embarrassed, as they were, with other nearer business. By the allusions in the speech, they, perhaps, wished to show that they had not lost sight of a subject which occupied so much of the public attention; but, with nothing to propose, were willing to let it lie over till it received its first impulse from some other quarter. This impulse it very soon did receive.
On the day of bringing in Mr. Sulivan's bill[179], Colonel Burgoyne made a motion, that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the nature, state, and condition of the East India Company, and of the British affairs in the East Indies. Burgoyne was a man not without talent, of showy parts, bold, vain, well-meaning, a political adventurer. He was not connected with the Ministry, but thought the opportunity a favourable one to bring himself into notice, by taking the lead in a question of great national consequence. In his speech introducing the motion, he represented, with much judgment, the inconsistency of giving a vote on the bill which was that day to be presented, without first examining the state of the country to which it referred; and that no facts were before the House to enable it to come to a sound judgment: he professed perfect impartiality and independence of all parties, and disavowed any hostility to the Company or its servants: he disclaimed all wish to throw the Company's affairs into the hands of the Crown; but argued that facts sufficiently notorious had occurred to justify and demand an inquiry into the rights of the Company, and the mode in which they had been exercised, especially as the fate of fifteen millions of people was involved in the question. It was objected to his motion, that the proceedings of a Select Committee being private, there was little responsibility on its members; that such a Committee would virtually be really a Government nomination; that no plan was yet before the House, and that, therefore, the inquiries of such a Committee must necessarily be vague and indefinite, such as the House could not limit or control. The motion, was, however, carried without a division; and the members, thirty-one in number, appointed by ballot, with directions, as the session was far spent, to sit during the summer. Mr. Sulivan's bill was dropped after the second reading.
When the Committee met, Colonel Burgoyne, who had proposed it, was chosen Chairman. It was expected that he would have proposed a plan; but having none to offer, Governor Johnstone, who was a member, and who saw all the advantages of attack which such a Committee afforded him, addressed the Committee, and submitted to them one which, from different motives, was agreed to by all. By some (says Mr. Strachey, himself a member of the Committee) it was readily adopted, because they saw that it tended to an inquiry into the conduct of individuals who had amassed great wealth in India, and particularly of Lord Clive, whose high reputation, as well as riches, had rendered him the most exalted object of envy. By Lord Clive himself, who was also a member of the Committee, the plan was readily adopted, because it was not fitting for him to oppose an inquiry into a conduct that had been so long the subject of ill-grounded invective. By the few personal friends of his Lordship it was readily adopted, because they were convinced that his character would receive additional lustre from the scrutiny, and that the attack levelled at his fame would tend only to establish his reputation in the minds of all mankind. Others acquiesced in it, because some plan was necessary, and it was the only one proposed.
It was not long before the hostile feelings of several members of the Committee to Lord Clive became manifest. The order originally proposed was soon departed from, and the inquiry pointedly turned against him, with many symptoms of personal animosity. The first and second reports,—the former containing examinations of witnesses, regarding the circumstances attending the revolutions of 1757 and 1760, the presents then given, and the grant of Lord Clive's jaghire,—the latter relating to the grievances connected with the inland trade in the time of Mr. Verelst,—were hurried on, and presented on the 26th of May following, just before the rising of the session, and printed in the Journals of the House.
Governor Johnstone took a leading part in their proceedings, and his views gave a particular turn to their labours, and that by no means favourable to Lord Clive. His plan seemed to be to show, that it had long been the custom to receive presents in India; that large presents had been received by Lord Clive, at the revolution in 1757, and by Mr. Vansittart and others in that of 1760; and that, therefore, the sums received by his brother, Mr. John Johnstone, on the accession of the young prince in 1765, stood on equally good grounds. The argument was, in one respect, at least, defective; for while, in the first instances, there existed no prohibition against receiving presents, in the last case, the Council had lying before them, covenants with the Company expressly restraining them from the receipt of presents, which covenants they had put aside, to avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by their own wrong, of enriching themselves by illicit advantages.
The publication of these examinations, of course, increased the ferment, which had begun to prevail on the subject of Indian affairs, and they were much talked of and discussed during the recess of Parliament that followed. Things had long been retrograding in India. So far back as May, 1769, the disastrous news from Madras, of Hyder's success, had produced a fall of 60 per cent. in the price of India stock. This the Directors had treated as an evil speedily to be removed. But that event was closely followed by news of a famine in Bengal in the following year; while trade declined, difficulties of every kind increased, and the debt of Calcutta was rapidly rising. Still, however, the Directors went on, in hopes of a favourable change, and from year to year, while their means diminished, the rate of dividend was increased; till, in 1770, it had reached 12 per cent. The extent of the bills from Bengal had excited alarm even then; but in the face of them, the Directors, at the first quarterly court in 1771, communicated their opinion, that the dividend should be raised a quarter per cent. for the ensuing half year; thus completing the 12½ per cent., the highest annual dividend that by the act was allowed to be drawn in the most prosperous circumstances. Their return to power they had owed to the assistance of the party which demanded a rise of dividend, and they were resolved to retain its support by a perseverance in their favourite object. Lord Clive had opposed the whole course of conduct of the Directors, their contract with Government, and the system which they pursued, both at home and abroad; though with little other effect than that of drawing on himself their active hostility. The inquiries in Parliament, however, had weakened the power of the Directors. The state of the Company's affairs could not now be permanently concealed. They found difficulties thickening around them. They were divided among themselves. Their expenses abroad threatened, not only to swallow up all the revenue of the country, but to burden them in both countries with an intolerable load of debt. By their recent engagements with Government they had given ministers a right to interfere in their concerns, and, in fact, placed themselves in their power. They contrived, however, to procrastinate, and to avoid any crisis, until the Parliament had risen.
A few days after the session was concluded[180], a grand installation of the Knights of the Bath took place[181], when Lord Clive was installed as a knight of the order, having been appointed several years before. In September the same year, upon the death of the Earl of Powis, lord-lieutenant of the county of Salop, he considered himself, from the extent of his property in the county, and the importance of his public services, as entitled to succeed him in the office. At the same time he felt some difficulty, being resolved that, situated as matters were, he would ask nothing of Ministers that could subject him to the appearance of courting their favour. Some of his friends advised him at once to ask a private audience of His Majesty, and to explain his claims without intervention. But this his good sense forbade; for Ministers, if they had not encouraged, had at least shown no disapprobation of the personal manner in which the proceedings of the Select Committee had been directed; and he justly considered it as dangerous to run the risk of making his Sovereign and the Ministers, who, at this period, had gained a decided ascendency over all the different parties in the country, his declared enemies. "I cannot be of your opinion," says he, writing on this subject to his friend Mr. Strachey[182], "because I think that things are not yet ripe for an open rupture. Until my conduct in Parliament is decided upon, I do not desire the King and his Ministers to be my declared enemies. In such a situation I should certainly not meet with much applause from the House for my conduct in the East Indies; and I wish at least that the members of the House, when they come to decide, may have no other motive for an unfavourable decision but envy; that, indeed, is too strongly implanted in the human breast to be removed." It soon appeared, however, that Lord Rochford had mentioned his name to his Majesty, who received it favourably; and a friend writes him that he believes that Lord North had really formed no plan on the subject (as Lord Clive seems to have apprehended), and would be very happy to have an opportunity of offering him the lieutenancy. "If it appears," says his friend, "that success is clear, you will only have to take the steps which the decorums of bestowing favours require; princes and ladies never are supposed to offer, but to grant, their favours, and expect to be asked what they have determined to give." Lord Clive, in conclusion, writes to Mr. Strachey; "I expect W. here in a day or two; and if he brings me a favourable account, I shall lose no time in going to town and demanding a private audience, that I may explain myself fully to his Majesty. I will not receive the lieutenancy through the channel of a minister." In this resolution, the result of a natural feeling of resentment, he probably relaxed; and his nomination of course took place, at least formally, on the recommendation of Lord North. Writing, on the 9th of October, to Mr. Strachey, he says, "Dear Strachey, I have the pleasure to inform you that I kissed the King's hand to-day, upon being appointed Lieutenant of the county of Salop. Afterwards I had a private audience, when I pushed the matter ably and well, to that degree as I could perceive the King was very much affected. The answer was favourable, but not determined; but I think it would be imprudent to treat more on the subject in a letter, and must therefore defer farther explanation until I have the pleasure of seeing you. The King talked upon Indian affairs for near half an hour; and I had an opportunity of mentioning your services and abilities."
He had also an interview with Lord North; and that amiable man and good-natured minister seems to have succeeded in appeasing, to a certain degree, his irritated feelings. "Lord North," says he[183], "when I saw him, seemed industriously to avoid entering upon the subject of India affairs; and I do verily believe, from sheer indolence of temper, he wishes to leave every thing to Providence and the Directors; and that he means nothing more by the meeting of Parliament[184], than to enable the Company to find money to discharge the demands that are at present made upon them. However, it behoves me to be prepared for every thing; for which purpose, you will perhaps say, I have been building castles in the air. Enclosed I send you a sketch of my ideas, which, I flatter myself, might be carried into execution by an able, steady, and upright minister. I don't wish to take you from your other business unnecessarily, but I wish you would take this sketch in hand, and methodise it. I would have you dwell fully and strongly upon the present situation of our affairs in India, and show, beyond a possibility of refutation, the approaching ruin of our possessions in the East, if vigorous measures be not speedily pursued. Your own experience and knowledge, added to my sentiments, expressed both in my speech and in the political paper laid before Lord North, will enable you to make a great progress in this matter; and upon my arrival in town what is wanting may be supplied. I will not patiently stand by, and see a great empire, acquired by great abilities, perseverance, and resolution, lost by ignorance and indolence. If Administration should think proper to see our affairs abroad in the same light as I do, 'tis well. If not, I shall have done my duty. Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat, may with a vengeance be applied to the Court of Directors appointing M(onckton) and five of their own body Supervisors. Private letters from India give a most dreadful account of the luxury, dissipation, and extravagance of Bengal."
It should seem that the plan here mentioned was afterwards prepared and presented to Lord North. It is dated the 24th of November, two days before the opening of Parliament. It embraces the whole system of Indian Government at home and abroad, and must have been a valuable contribution[185] at a moment when Parliament was called, for the express purpose of considering the state of the Company's concerns.
In December, the same year, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Montgomeryshire.
Meanwhile, the Parliament had hardly risen for the summer, when the difficulties in the Company's affairs which have been alluded to, became too great to be concealed. Though the Directors had long suffered inconvenience from the want of funds, the first unsurmountable difficulty in the means of discharging the demands on them was said to be observed by their cashier in the beginning of July, 1772. This he communicated to Mr. Sulivan; a Committee of Treasury was called, and there was laid before them an estimate of the probable receipts and payments for the months of July, August, September, and October, when it appeared that they could command only 954,200l., to meet demands amounting to 2,247,200l., leaving a deficiency of 1,293,000l. On the 15th of July it was resolved to apply to the Bank for a loan of 400,000l. for two months, which was granted; and, on the 29th of July, a further loan of 300,000l. was asked, but only 200,000l. received. At a Committee of Treasury, held on the 11th of August 1772, the Chairman and Deputy Chairman acquainted the Members, that they had waited on Lord North to present to his Lordship the state of the Company's affairs, and had represented that the sum of near 1,000,000l. sterling would be necessary to be borrowed to carry on the circulation of the Company's affairs, and that of this million about 500,000l. would be left undischarged in the month of March following, when the whole produce of the September sale would probably be received.[186] The first Lord of the Treasury is said to have received their proposals with dryness and reserve, and referred them to Parliament for satisfaction. They had once more recourse to the plan of appointing supervisors, with full powers for the regulation of their affairs abroad; and after various delays, six gentlemen[187] were named, who agreed to accept the difficult and invidious office.
Ministers, in these circumstances, and when called upon to sanction a loan of such an amount, could not avoid taking a direct share in the affairs of the Company. The Parliament was called before the holidays, for the express purpose of adopting some efficient measures to recover their affairs from the confusion into which they had fallen. His Majesty, in his speech from the throne, on the 26th of November, observed, "When I received information of the difficulties in which the Company appears to be involved, I determined to give you an early opportunity of informing yourselves fully of the true state of their affairs, and of making such provisions for the common benefit and security of all the various interests concerned as you shall find best adapted to the exigencies of the case."
The necessity of some remedy was sufficiently plain; but there was a deficiency of knowledge and of facts. The Minister now clearly perceived, from the line of inquiry into which the Select Committee had deviated, and the temper of some of the members, that their labours, whatever other effects they might have, were not likely to afford such information as would enable Parliament, in the present exigency, to regulate or even to understand the Company's affairs. Lord North, the same day on which the Address was voted, after adverting to the distressed situation of the Company, a distress which he ascribed chiefly to the complicated union of civil and political power with their commercial affairs, expressed his conviction that, embarrassed as they were for the moment, they were still in full health, and, with a temporary assistance, fully able to meet and discharge all their engagements; that, by the measure which he had to propose, their secret and confidential transactions would be known but to a few, so that no unfair advantage could be taken. He concluded by moving that, for the better ascertaining the real condition of the Company's affairs, a Committee of Secresy be appointed to inquire into the state of the East India Company; and for that purpose to inspect the books and accounts of the said Company, and to report to the House what they find material therein, in respect to the debts, credits, and effects of the Company; as also to the management and present situation of the Company's affairs, together with their observations thereupon. It was also referred to them to report their opinion of the steps taken by the Company of sending out Supervisors.
In the debate that ensued, Colonel Burgoyne thought it necessary to vindicate the late Committee from the aspersions which he imagined had been thrown on it by insinuations that the present embarrassed state of the Company's affairs was in any degree to be attributed to the mode of inquiry that it had adopted: he expatiated largely on what the Committee had done, and with much warmth affirmed, from his own knowledge, that their inquiries would disclose such a scene of iniquity, rapine, and injustice, such unheard-of cruelties, such violations of every rule of morality, religion, and good government, as were never before discovered; that in the whole investigation he could not find a sound spot whereon to lay his finger, it being all one mass of the most unheard-of villanies, and the most notorious corruption. That, if the proposed Committee was intended to supersede former inquiry, he could look upon it in no other light than a design to protect the guilty, and serve the purpose of stockjobbing. Lord North said, that he did not mean to impede the revival of the Select Committee. His motion was agreed to, and a Committee of thirteen appointed. The Select Committee of last year was also continued.
In a few days the new appointed Secret Committee, in consequence of the reference made to them, gave in a Special Report, recommending that a Bill should be brought in to restrain the Company, for a limited time, from sending out Supervisors. The rapidity with which this recommendation was produced, drew from Mr. Burke the observation, that "Ministers, finding that the Select Committee of last year, a lawful wife publicly avowed, was barren, and had produced nothing, had taken a neat little snug one, which they called a Secret Committee, and that this was her first-born. Indeed," added he, "from the singular expedition of this extraordinary delivery, I am apt to think she was pregnant before wedlock." The Bill, when introduced, was violently opposed, as oppressive and unconstitutional; and supported on the grounds of the mixed nature of the Company, which was not merely a trading corporation, but a political body, an union of the merchant and magistrate; and that the appointment of Supervisors was really an interference with the Parliament, which was busily engaged in investigating the abuses, that the commission professed to be intended to correct. The East India Company were heard against it by Counsel. Mr. Burke opposed the Bill with his usual exuberance of reason and wit: he said, that the arguments of the Counsel must have left conviction on the mind of every gentleman who retained the least regard to national faith. He ridiculed the inefficiency of the two Committees then sitting. "One (the Select Committee) has been so slow in their motions, that the Company have given up, long since, all hopes of redress from them; and the other, (the Secret) has gone on altogether so rapidly, that they do not know where they will stop. Like the fly of a jack, the latter has gone, hey-go-mad! the other, like the ponderous lead at the other end; and in that manner, Sir, have roasted the East India Company." He charged the Minister with supineness, who, though himself the cause of the ruin of the Company, had done nothing, but came to the House to ask them to do what was his business. That, in 1767, an inquiry into the affairs of the Company was set on foot; that Parliament sat day after day for forty-one days, and broke up without doing any thing at all. "It was near about that period," he continued, "that a discovery was made that the India Company had obtained an acquisition of great wealth. It seems, Sir, that a lady of great fortune in India, who had been ungenerously dealt with by her stewards, was unlucky enough to engage the attention of Parliament, who, perhaps envious of the booty being divided without their having any share, paid their addresses to the lady, but whether to her person or fortune you must determine; for, Sir, they were very eager to embrace her; they pretended to rescue her from the rapacity of her stewards, yet, as soon as they touched the very good fortune of 400,000l. per annum, they left the lady to destruction. In this manner, Sir, the last Parliament acted; and, after pretending to redress the grievances of the Company, got up, after forty-one days' painful and laborious sitting, without coming to any conclusion at all. What has the Select Committee of this Parliament been, but a mock inquiry?" Sir William Meredith, who was a Member of that Committee, retorted Mr. Burke's comparison not unhappily. "He compares the two Committees," said he, "to a jack; the Secret one is like the flier of a jack, the other like the weight. I agree with him in the simile, but draw a very different conclusion. Sir, between the heavy ponderous weight at one end, and the quick motion of the flier, the dish is prepared, and rendered fit for digestion." In the course of the debate, Lord Clive observed, "I will trespass upon the indulgence of the House but a few moments. I am sorry, Sir, to find the India Company contending with Parliament, because, whenever their rights to territorial possessions are examined into, they will be disputed, and the Crown become the actual possessor of them. No man, Sir, has been more liberally rewarded by the Company than I have been; and though the learned sages of the law have very ably argued the cause of their clients, yet, Sir, I feel myself influenced by motives which they cannot feel, gratitude and interest; and Sir, if ever I should be forgetful of the one, which God forbid, the other would teach me to attend to the affairs of the Company. Sir, I consider the interests of the nation and the Company as inseparable; and, with respect to the Supervisors, I was and continue to be against it; but at the same time, I consider this Bill as an exertion, indeed, of parliamentary authority, yet extremely necessary; and I could wish that the Company had met this House half way, instead of petitioning, and quarrelling with the mouth that is to feed them. With respect to the gentlemen nominated for the supervision, they are themselves the best judges, whether their abilities and integrity are equal to the important service in which they were to engage. Had they, Sir, known the East Indies as well as I do, they would shudder at the bare idea of such a perplexing and difficult service. The most rigid integrity, with the greatest disinterestedness,—the greatest abilities with resolution and perseverance,—must be united in the man or men who undertake to reform the accumulating evils which exist in Bengal, and which threaten to involve the nation and the Company in one common ruin." The Bill was carried by a large majority, and finally passed both Houses.
It would seem as if the Court of Directors had resolved, that whenever their affairs came before Parliament, they should, as far as depended on them, contrive to find Lord Clive employment in his private concerns. When the bill of last session was to be proposed, certain heavy charges had been brought up against him, and hung out as a terror. When the present session was about to open, and much attention expected to be paid to Indian affairs, Lord Clive, on the 4th November, received an intimation from the Court of Directors, that they had taken the opinions of counsel relative to the loss sustained by the Company from the payment of the balances due to the renters of salt-pans in Bengal, out of their treasury; the commission received by him upon the revenues of Bengal, after his departure thence; and the interest due on sums paid for duties on salt, betle-nut, and tobacco; and were advised that he, and the rest of the gentlemen concerned in the payment of these balances, were liable to make good the same; that they were accountable for interest on the duties on salt, &c., and that his Lordship was not entitled to the commission on the revenues; and therefore calling upon him to make good those demands, but expressing an earnest wish for an amicable adjustment, to save the expense and disagreeable circumstances of a suit in equity. After many delays in procuring even a statement of the amount of the demands thus intended to be made on him, his Lordship agreed to refer the whole to arbitrators, as they desired, and named on his side Mr. Madocks, an eminent counsel; when the Directors insisted that the referees should be merchant arbitrators; Lord Clive, with every appearance of reason, contended that the differences between them consisted of questions of law and government; and that, had they been commercial, a lawyer was not an improper arbitrator: in short, that they were receding from their own proposal; which gave reason to suspect that what they had in view was, not a decision, but a lawsuit. His Lordship judged correctly, for the Directors ordered a suit to be instituted.[188]
Early in the year 1773, the Court of Directors, seeing the Company's concerns more and more burthened on every side, and having no means of answering the demands upon them, were compelled to apply to Government for a loan of 1,500,000l., for four years. This measure placed them, if possible, more completely than ever in the hands of the Ministry; and the Parliament, for the next four months, was entirely occupied with a series of motions, reports, and petitions, connected with their affairs. The debates of that period, which are very important, belong rather to the history of the East India Company and of the times, than to the Memoirs of Lord Clive. In the line of his politics being decidedly opposed to the measures of the Directors, which he considered as fatal to the prosperity of the Company, and being of opinion that their territorial acquisitions must be held as being acquired for the State, he generally voted with the Minister, but without joining his party.
It was in the course of this important session that a desperate blow was aimed at Lord Clive's honour and fortune. India affairs, though not in general very popular, or much attended to, engaged, at that time, a large share of the public attention. Violent discussions were going on in the Court of Proprietors, and in the Court of Directors, which were not only at war with each other, but divided within themselves: the East India Company complained loudly of the Ministry, which did not fail to recriminate; two Parliamentary Committees (the Select Committee, and the Committee of Secresy,) were sitting at the same time on the Company's affairs, and often occupied with nearly the same questions; petitions from the Company, the City of London, and the Proprietors, were daily presented to Parliament on Indian affairs; the events of the preceding fifteen years were reviewed, and brought before the public, by men influenced by every sentiment of public good and personal animosity; and many were violently agitated by all the passions that the love of gain, the fear of ruin, ambition, honour, public spirit, or private malevolence, can put in motion.
When, in this general turmoil, the acts of almost every man who had filled any conspicuous situation in India were passed in review, and commented on with all the virulence of party spirit, it is not to be imagined that one who had acted so eminent a part in the events of the East, and who had taken so active a share in those at home, as Lord Clive had done, should escape without reproach. No man, from his situation, had made more enemies; and they were not only powerful and rich, but able and persevering. The combined force of so many passions in angry commotion, and seeking for vent in one direction or another, seemed all at once to be turned against him. It appeared as if he were singled out as the political scape-goat of Indian criminality, to bear the crimes of others as well as his own faults.
The first attack came from the Select Committee, which had directed its attention much more to inquiries into particular historical facts, and charges of a personal nature, than to those general views which could enable Parliament, situated as it was, and pressed by the exigencies and clamours of a sinking Company, to legislate speedily, and with proper information. Lord Clive, in a letter of the 25th March, 1773, to General Wedderburn (the brother of the Solicitor-General), who then commanded at Bombay, and who, in the November following, fell at the siege of Broach, universally beloved and lamented, gives his opinion of the situation of affairs, and of the proceedings of the Committees, as they appeared to him, while things were still going on and unconcluded. "I know not what to say," he observes, "in my defence, for having thus long neglected to answer your several letters, so full in themselves of matter and of the situation of affairs, both at Bombay and upon the Continent. The real truth is, that the Parliamentary appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the state, nature, and condition of the Company's affairs, and which hitherto hath been chiefly an inquiry into the conduct of your very humble servant, took up so much of my time and attention that I could not bring myself to think upon any other subject. This session the inquiry has been resumed by another Committee, called the Secret Committee, with much more serious attention, and with much greater abilities; so that I think a remedy may at last be applied to the many increasing evils in every part of India, if Government will stand forth, and do what they ought to do upon the occasion. No man is more capable than your brother of communicating to you what is at present in agitation, and what are most likely to be the consequences. For my part, I have ever been of opinion that all reformation abroad, until a thorough reformation takes place at home, can only be temporary, and must in the end prove futile. If we cannot have an able, honest, and independent Court of Directors at home, and a Governor and Council-General abroad of the same stamp, there is no salvation for the Company, and we shall at last be drove to the dreadful alternative of either seeing the whole of our possessions fall into the hands of Government, or of our inveterate enemies the French; and if the Proprietors have not virtue enough among them to make a proper choice, Parliament must do it for them; and I hope the choice will be such as may do honour to their country, and real service to the Company."
After the appointment of the Secret Committee, the attendance of the members of the Select Committee began to relax. Some became tired of the business, and others stayed away, disliking the personal and inquisitorial turn latterly given to their proceedings. Nearly a year, accordingly, intervenes between the dates of their second and third reports. It seems that Colonel Burgoyne, Governor Johnstone, Mr. Ongley, and Mr. Strachey, continued regular in their attendance; but it was with much difficulty, even during the sitting of Parliament, that seven members could be collected, without which the Committee could not sit. Still, however, the Chairman persevered; and various reports, several of them containing matter of great importance, were finally prepared.
The Secret Committee had been chiefly named by the Ministry. It had in its number several men of business, who, not being prompted by any personal resentments, and desirous of avoiding the reproaches thrown upon the first Committee, proceeded to scrutinise the actual state of the Company's concerns, so as to afford to the House data, so much required for coming to a conclusion regarding the real condition and solvency of the Company, and the general management of its affairs at home and abroad. The Minister was anxious, from the labours of the two, to be able to discover some principles for the guidance of the Company's affairs, and to enable the Government to satisfy the country. The questions had become very complicated, and numerous individuals were implicated. The Attorney-General, Thurlow, undertook to peruse the papers during the Easter holidays, and to lay before the Minister the propositions that might result from them. A consultation, to which were called the chief ministerial members who had taken an active part in India affairs, was afterwards held at the Minister's house. The Solicitor-General, Wedderburn, who was known to be Lord Clive's personal friend, was not invited. The proposition made by the Attorney-General, after considering the papers, is said to have been, that Parliament should confiscate to the public all the sums acquired by English public servants in the East Indies, under the denomination of presents from the Indian Princes, as having been obtained by the military force of this country, and, therefore, belonging to the State. This sweeping proposition, which confounded different times and circumstances, startled the meeting. Some of them observed, that no distinction was made between presents received before and after they were prohibited; that some had been received as the reward of signal meritorious services, and enjoyed for a long series of years, without any claim having been made upon them either by the State or the Company; and that, even as to those for whom such favourable distinctions could not be made, to deprive them, to their ruin, of property that had been long and quietly enjoyed, would be considered as harsh and revolting. The surly lawyer declared that, upon mature consideration, he had not been able to form any other proposition, and the consultation broke up.[189] It seems, however, to have been on this proposition, that Colonel Burgoyne grounded his subsequent motion.
It is obvious that committees constituted like the two in question, however industrious, and however impartial, must, from their composition, be liable to occasional errors; and before proceeding farther, it may be remarked that, in the course of their proceedings, several such did accordingly occur. The India House, from which their principal materials were to be derived, was under an influence most hostile to Lord Clive and his interests; and official men best know how easy it is to give a particular turn or colour even to official documents or accounts. Lord North, in his speech of March 23, 1773, remarked, that persons concerned in keeping the Company's accounts were such expert arithmeticians, that they were acquainted with the twofold manner of ciphering; in consequence of which it was apparent that there was such a thing as a twofold method of stating accounts. And Mr. Sulivan himself[190], in the same debate, acknowledged that the statement made by the Secret and Select Committees, of the state of the Company's affairs, was in several respects erroneous. One of the most glaring errors of fact is to be found in the Third Report of the Select Committee, where Lord Clive is represented as having got his jaghire at the period of the revolution in favour of Meer Jaffier[191], though in reality it was not granted for two years afterwards; a very important difference. Another instance may be given. The Secret Committee, in one of their Reports, stated that Lord Clive and his Council had paid away a large sum of money to individuals, under the head of Donation-money, in direct contradiction to an express order of the Court of Directors issued long before. On the publication of this statement, Lord Clive at once showed that it was erroneous; and that the order had been sent by the Falmouth, which was wrecked, and the packet lost; and that a duplicate did not reach Bengal till a considerable time after the payment had been made. These facts it accidentally happened that he was able to prove from the records of the India House. But assertions, even where unfounded, do not always admit of being disproved so satisfactorily, or even at all.
From this and some other articles misreported in a similar way, the partiality of the Secret Committee seemed liable to suspicion. From this imputation they were, however, exculpated by Mr. Jenkinson, afterwards Lord Liverpool, a member of the Committee, who informed the House, that, as the Committee had found it impossible themselves to search for facts among the vast mass of papers at the India House, they had been under the necessity of confiding in the diligence and accuracy of the clerks in the several departments; and that, for the matter then in debate, they had trusted to Mr. Samuel Wilks, the examiner of India correspondence, who appeared to them to be a man of extreme caution and industry.
The error in question was one that might have escaped Mr. Wilks quite unintentionally; but it is to be feared that all the errors or misrepresentations were not of the same description: and the circumstances to be stated, may prove what unseen yet formidable difficulties Lord Clive and all who were opposed to the Directors had to contend with, where the effect of a passing, incorrect assertion contained in a single line, was often not to be destroyed, if at all, by long and painful representations of the real circumstances.
On the 3d of May, when Lord North moved for leave to bring in his Bill for the better management of the East India Company, Lord Clive solicited the indulgence of the House, while he explained a few facts which had been partially stated in the Reports of the Select Committee. While he defended his own character, he did not spare Lord North nor the Court of Directors. He complained in particular of the mean and dishonest artifices which had been resorted to by some of the Directors to blast his honest fame, and that through the agency of the Committee then sitting. That one gentleman, a member of that House, who had long been the principal manager of the affairs of the East India Company[192], had on the seventh day of November last, in a private conversation with Mr. Hoole, the Auditor-General, told him that he wished for his assistance in a matter that would be particularly serviceable, and desired that he would draw up a complete state of the civil and military charges of Bengal, and likewise the revenues from the time of Lord Clive's arrival in Bengal in 1765; and directed him to refer to all the letters, plans, or regulations of Lord Clive, noting how far the charges, revenues, &c. agreed with them; to trace out the causes of any increase or decrease; to draw up the whole historically and progressively, making all the accounts his own; and, as Mr. Sulivan expressed himself, to mark the man; concluding that he wished to show that all the distresses of the Company arose from him. Lord Clive reminded the House with what caution materials drawn up in such a spirit, and issuing from such a source, were to be received; and how easily, by the effect of so powerful an engine, any man's reputation could be destroyed.
Mr. Sulivan rose in his own vindication, and acknowledged the circumstance to be true; but said, that as Lord Clive had taken occasion in the House, last session, to impute the distresses of the Company to the Directors, he thought he, as a Director, was justified in endeavouring to turn the tables, and lay the blame upon his Lordship, which he had been in hopes of doing fairly, with the assistance of Mr. Hoole. He then expatiated upon the enmity which had long been maintained against him by Lord Clive; and to show that it had not been reciprocal, he would now, he said, divulge a circumstance highly injurious to the noble Lord's honour, and which he had industriously concealed from the Secret Committee: this was the suppression of sixteen months' correspondence which had passed during his first government of Bengal, and which, though repeatedly called for by the Directors, had never been produced: that it was believed that the letters so suppressed might set the business of the jaghire in a different light from any in which it had yet appeared. Lord Clive, immediately rising, stated the facts. The correspondence with Indian Princes is always carried on by the Governor only; and translations are kept in books transmitted to the Directors from time to time. Some portion of it, written in the year 1759, by some accident had been neglected to be sent home. In 1763, when Lord Clive filed a bill against the Company for recovering his jaghire, the Directors (suspecting that the missing letters might contain something of importance, and had therefore been withheld) called on him to produce them, as it was presumed that he had retained copies for himself of his correspondence. In answer, he acquainted the Court that he had delivered the sections in question to Mr. Campbell, a Scotch author, in the year 1760, in order to prepare a memorial concerning the Dutch affairs to be laid before Mr. Pitt, then Secretary of State: that since then he had not seen them, though he had in vain made every inquiry after them; but that, from his own knowledge, he could affirm they did not contain any thing that could affect the matter in dispute between him and the Company.
To this statement Mr. Sulivan, of course, might give only such credit as he was disposed; but, as it happened, some account of the debate having appeared in the public newspapers, Dr. Campbell wrote to inform Lord Clive that he had found the sections mentioned by Mr. Sulivan, and was ready to deliver them to his Lordship's order. They were accordingly recovered next day, and immediately sent to the Court of Directors, and were found not to have the smallest reference to the jaghire.
But though Lord Clive had it in his power to meet and answer thus speedily these reflections upon his character, it is very evident that this good fortune was partly owing to accident; and that, in many similar instances, the most honourable and the most cautious of men might have found it altogether impossible to explain, at the moment, or at all, charges thus brought against them, at the distance of many years, when the minute circumstances had dropped from their memory, when documents had been mislaid or lost, or witnesses had fallen under the stroke of death. Several persons, whose acts were alluded to in the various reports, complained bitterly of this, as well as that the injury was not known till it had become in some measure irreparable by publication.
At length the storm which had so long been gathering against Lord Clive in the Select Committee, burst upon his head. The Committee had taken a historical view of the whole incidents, military and political, that had occurred in Bengal for seventeen years before; and Lord Clive and most of the chief agents who had been engaged in them had been repeatedly examined. Colonel Burgoyne, who, on the 8th and 21st of April, had brought up the Third and Fourth Reports of the Committee, called the attention of the House to them on the 10th of May[193], and, after alluding to the disagreeable situation in which he was placed, declared that the Reports contained an account of crimes shocking to human nature; that all the disasters that had befallen the Company and their affairs in the East could be traced back to the dethronement of Suraj-u-Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier; a revolution, he said, effected by the blackest perfidy. He dwelt upon the circumstances of that event, in which Lord Clive took the leading part; the fictitious treaty by which Omichund was induced to desert his master; the forging, as he alleged, of Admiral Watson's name to that treaty, when the Admiral himself refused to subscribe it; the subsequent agreement with Meer Jaffier, and the immense sums received by the Select Committee of Calcutta, and others of the principal agents, under the name of presents or donations, but which, being, as he asserted, extorted by the influence of military force, did, like all acquisitions by treaty with foreign powers, of right belong to the State. He also attacked the proceedings of General Caillaud and others; and after expatiating on the enormities which the Reports had brought to light, he concluded by moving the following resolutions:—"1. That all acquisitions made under the influence of a military force, or by treaty with foreign Princes, do of right belong to the State. 2. That to appropriate acquisitions so made to the private emolument of persons entrusted with any civil or military power of the State, is illegal. 3. That very great sums of money and other valuable property have been acquired in Bengal, from Princes and others of that country, by persons entrusted with the military and civil 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."
Colonel Burgoyne intimated to the House that, if these resolutions met with their approbation, he would not stop there, but would follow them up with vigour; and that his object was to compel such as had acquired sums of money in the way alluded to, to make full and complete restitution to the public.
The motion was seconded by Sir William Meredith; who said that there were only two possible ways to bring about a reformation in the East Indies,—the one by law, the other by example. That as to law, he could not comprehend how it was practicable to enforce laws made at such a distance: that the constitution of the present government of Bengal was defined to be a union of the sovereign and merchant; and that Mr. Vansittart explained what was the law by which these merchant-sovereigns exercised their supreme power: their rule of selling was to take as much as they pleased, while the rule by which they bought was to pay as little as they pleased. That the evils complained of were to be corrected not by law only, but by example; and deplored the stain brought upon the British name by the transactions which the Reports before the House disclosed.
Mr. Wedderburn answered, at considerable length, the principal assertions of the speakers that preceded him; and showed the incompetency of the evidence on which some of the facts rested, and the erroneous and unjust conclusions that had been drawn from others, so far as concerned Lord Clive. As to the forgery of Admiral Watson's name to the treaty with Omichund (he continued), it would be needless to analyse it, because the noble Lord has declared that, had it been necessary, he himself readily would have done it, and certainly done right in politics, to take that or any other means to destroy in an enemy so great a tyrant. He concluded by saying, that the resolutions before the House were founded in envy and illiberal principles; they were narrow, pointed at individuals, and neglecting future reformation, which ought to be the grand object of the inquiry; and above all, that there was in the Reports an indecision and defect of evidence that must render every thing done on their authority arbitrary and illegal. Mr. Attorney-General Thurlow defended the resolutions, and answered Mr. Wedderburn's speech.
In the course of the debate Lord Clive rose, and defended himself with great dignity and force. He pointed out the mistakes in matters of fact in the Reports, and in the speeches founded on them. He took a review of his own public life and services, and especially of that part of them that had been brought into question. He claimed the rewards and the honours bestowed on him as justly his due; lamented the abuse that had been made of the public press, and the mode resorted to of slandering the character of all orders of men without distinction: that for his part, he had been called villain, scoundrel, thief, murderer, assassin, &c.; but that he need not complain, as even Majesty itself had not escaped this implacable fury. What he regretted was the cause of virtue and public spirit, which must inevitably suffer, if this abuse was permitted to go unpunished; since the greatest inducement to men of superior talent to stand forth and distinguish themselves in their country's cause, was the hope of fair fame and just applause. Having explained the circumstances of the revolution, so far as he was concerned, and defended the legality of all the presents he had received, both in point of law and of justice, and alluded to the honours he had received for the very acts now questioned, he concluded by saying, "If the record of my services at the India House, if the defence I have twice made in this House, and if the approbation I have already met with, is not an answer to the attack that has been made upon me, I certainly can make none."
The two first resolutions passed without a division; and the third was also carried, though after some opposition.
Encouraged by this success, Colonel Burgoyne, on the 17th of May, prepared to bring home these general propositions to the individuals concerned; and, in the first place, pointed his charges against Lord Clive. He began by making some remarks on the invidious situation in which he was placed by the conscientious discharge of his duty. "The task of a public accuser was never a pleasing, but was sometimes a necessary one. Envy and malignity were the vices of little minds, and he disclaimed them. The House, in its movements, had only followed the cry of the public. Instances of rapacity and injustice had occurred in our Eastern possessions, that were known to all the world; an inordinate desire of wealth had had full play, and had led to transactions which had stigmatised those immediately concerned in them, and affected even the British name. That it was the duty of the House, as guardians of the nation's honour, to apply a remedy; and as the vice had been general, so must the punishment. It was a case in which no partial or limited censure would suffice to remove the evil, or to wipe off the stain from the country. The whole system on which the agents in the various revolutions had been remunerated, or rather had remunerated themselves, was most exceptionable and illegal. The first principle that he would lay down was, that it was impossible that any civil or military servant, in treating with a foreign Prince or State, could lawfully bargain for, or acquire, property for himself. This principle had uniformly been departed from in all the transactions which had been laid before the House. It would be necessary to point out who the persons were who had so acquired property, and the particular circumstances under which it had been acquired. Death had removed some of these persons, and their case would therefore be a matter of future consideration. That it was proper to consider the state of India at the time when the money was received. A mighty change had just taken place in that country, and in the Company's affairs. In the year 1757, when the English ascendancy was established, the Company was raised, as by the power of magic, from the situation of merchants to that of sovereign Princes, and, in their delirium, they at once forgot their charters; while their servants, become ministers, and rulers of the Governors of provinces and Princes, looked with contempt on the slow returns of trade and merchandise, since they saw before them a shorter and surer way to opulence. What was the consequence? The power thus placed in their hands was not tenderly employed. Revolution followed revolution; and, at each successive change, the treasures of the Prince were lavished to glut the rapacity of the agents by whom it was effected. At last, when the whole treasures of the Princes were exhausted, they did not stop short, but took possession of the country itself, at the same time that they retained the name of the puppet whom they set up, only to confound all ideas of right and justice. In the revolution of 1757, effected by Lord Clive, great stress had been laid on its necessity; but every succeeding revolution had been sustained on the same ground,—a ground that never would be wanting. It appeared that, by the treaty with Sujah-u-Dowlah, the Company were confirmed in all the privileges they had formerly enjoyed; the Company had their factories restored; and to individuals who had suffered, a compensation was made. Surely, in such circumstances, the Nabob had a right to expect to be able to preserve a state of neutrality among the different nations who had factories in his dominions; yet, on the breaking out of the war with France, it was thought proper to violate the treaty just concluded, by attacking Chandernagore. The Select Committee were not unanimous on this point. Becher was for neutrality, Drake had no opinion at all. The violent counsels of Clive prevailed. It was argued, that having gone so far we must go farther; that having established ourselves by force, we had made the Nabob our enemy, and that in consequence he must always be ready to join our enemies; and some circumstances of his conduct, said to indicate a hostile feeling, were pointed out. But, in fact, when we broke with him, and hurled him from his high eminence, Suraj-u-Dowlah had been guilty of no overt act of hostility; all that was alleged, were various suspicions that he meant to break the treaty." He detailed the circumstances attending the deposition of Meer Jaffier; the various sums received by Lord Clive, amounting to 2,080,000 rupees, or 234,000l. sterling; and contended that they were received contrary to justice and right.
He acknowledged that, in the Dutch affair, Lord Clive had shown perfect magnanimity and disinterestedness.
"Soon after this first revolution was effected, the fortunes of those concerned in it being made, we had an importation of Nabobs,—a circumstance which only whetted the rapacity of those who were still on the scene of action. There were now new men, a new Council to be satisfied, and the principles of the revolution of 1757 were not forgotten. It was discovered that there was a necessity for another revolution; and accordingly, in 1760, Meer Cossim was placed in the seat of Meer Jaffier. But Cossim was an able tyrant, who was soon found to be too intelligent to serve the purpose of a mere tool, and it became necessary to restore Jaffier. With Cossim, indeed, there was no stipulation for rewards. Mr. Vansittart was then Governor. Twenty lacs of rupees were offered to the Council for their favour and countenance. But no; the Company's servants put by them the proffered treasure, as Cæsar put by the crown. The Nabob was, however, given to understand, that after their masters the Company were satisfied, the servants would have no objection to receive what was offered. It was difficult to treat seriously this mighty difference between taking money before and after a treaty. The consequences are but too obvious, and amount to the same thing.
"In the case of the Nabob Najm-Dowlah which followed, the succession was a regular one, and the deputation which was sent on the occasion, headed by Mr. John Johnstone, acted with fidelity in establishing the proper heir; but they improved a regular accession to the purpose of a revolution, and enriched themselves and the other Members of the Council by presents and donations received in the course of this common discharge of an ordinary duty. "I won't," said he, "colour and conceal the conduct of the Council. They are unjustifiable. They knew of the existence of the covenants prohibiting them from receiving presents, at the very time when they bargained for and received them. I have no acquaintance with any of them. I owe them neither partiality nor grudge. I am, indeed, happy and proud to be esteemed the friend of Governor Johnstone, the relative of one whose name has been mixed in these transactions; but that has no influence on my judgment. At the same time it is not possible to overlook the mode in which evidence was procured in India, on this last subject, under the influence of Lord Clive, by persecution not to be equalled in Portugal. The witnesses were brought up under military guard: little pains were taken to contradict facts, when they were known to be false. The result of these inquiries is embodied in the infamous letter of September, 1765[194], a composition which disgraces the ablest pen by the direction in which it was employed.
"Into the question relating to the money received from the Begum[195] I shall not enter, as the Report is not yet on the table. But from the documents before the House, it will appear that the total amount of the presents and donations received by Lord Clive was 2,000,000 of rupees, exclusive of the jaghire. My object is, that restitution of this sum should be made to the Company and the sufferers. If any man can say that these sums were received according to the correct definition of presents, I shall be exceedingly surprized. Such is not the light in which I hold them.
"Let it be remembered, that the revolution of 1757 was the foundation and the model of all the subsequent revolutions. Our vindictive justice must go back to the origin of the evil. It is in many mouths, the hardship of taking up a subject after such a time, and of wresting from a man a fortune valiantly obtained and generously dispensed. If time is to sanctify such offences, we should bring in a statute of limitation of robbery. Let it not be said, that the magnitude of the offence, and the wealth and dignity of the offender, are to be deemed a sufficient justification.
"No public notice was given to the Company of the receipt of these sums. But it is said that there is no instance of reporting to the Company private donations, though they were always understood to be received; and it is said that Lord Clive's were known to the Court. If so, I shall be glad to hear only a letter saying so.—But they acquiesced when they were known. That I deny. A Court of Proprietors passed, in 1760, a positive order to institute a minute inquiry about these presents. It is said that he had rendered great and important services to the Company and his country. No doubt, services should be duly weighed, and national rewards bestowed on national services, and that amply. I wish to see the names of Lawrence, Draper, Monson, and of many other eminent men, who have rescued us from more than Indian armies, honoured with due estimation; and far be it from me to deny to Lord Clive the meed of praise that is due to him. But in coming to a judgment on the grave and serious charges now before the House, all partiality and all prejudice in a man's favour should be laid aside: an act of national justice is called for; it is not to be influenced by wealth or connections, and will be given if a particle of that vital fire that first invigorated this constitution still remains. Imitate the first example of antiquity, and strike, like Manlius, when the justice of the State requires it.
"I wish not to plunder or impoverish Lord Clive, or the subjects of this motion. I am willing they should remain in possession of such rewards as a generous State would give. What I ask is, a Bill for the satisfaction of sufferers out of the private estates of persons who received sums of money unwarrantably. Such satisfaction ought to be made to the Company, and applied to the discharge of their debts. Leave something to them of their overgrown fortunes, but let it be upon European principles; let it be arranged on the principles of the better times of our history. Where were jaghires and private donations in the time of King William, to whom our liberties owe so much? In the Act to be passed, let the monies go, as they should originally have done, to the State. I have no desire, no wish, that after satisfaction has been made, any odium should remain against the accused. I have offered them an opportunity of bringing their characters from under the cloud which has surrounded them, and of justifying themselves to the world." He concluded by moving, "That it appears to this House, that the Right Hon. Robert Lord Clive, Baron of Plassey in the kingdom of Ireland, about the time of the deposition of Suraj-u-Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier on the musmud, through the influence of the powers with which he was entrusted as a member of the Select Committee and Commander-in-chief of the British forces, did obtain and possess himself of 2 lacs of rupees as Commander-in-chief, a farther sum of 2 lacs and 80,000 rupees as member of the Select Committee, and a farther sum of 16 lacs or more under the denomination of a private donation; which sums, amounting together to 20 lacs and 80,000 rupees, were of the value, in English money, of 234,000l.; and that, in so doing, the said Robert Lord 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."[196]
These resolutions were seconded by Sir Wm. Meredith, who combated the notion of the supposed hardship of bringing up such charges, after a period of sixteen years, and contended that length of time could not improve the title to wealth so acquired. As to presents, he denied that covenants alone made the receiving of them a crime, or that where there were no covenants they were legal: that it had been found, indeed, that presents had been taken, after the receipt of the covenants, by Mr. Johnstone and others, in circumstances which had been investigated and published by Lord Clive; but that it did not appear that the ill-blood excited by such disclosure had had the slightest influence on the conduct of his brother, the Governor, who had carried on the investigation before the Committee with perfect exactness: that it could not be overlooked, that the evidence against that gentleman had been taken in a most illegal manner, the witnesses being under restraint: that Lord Clive's supposed generosity in not plundering Moorshedabad was nugatory; that he entered it not as a conqueror, but as an ally: nor would the assertion, that there was no criminal intention in receiving the presents, acquit him; that would only affect the extent of the consequences. Colonel Burgoyne's original motion was to be kept in mind, and that he was content to leave him all that his merit deserved. Others had fought against European enemies, he against wretched Indians,—a circumstance not to be forgotten in estimating the comparative merit of officers.
Mr. Wedderburn (then Solicitor-General) strenuously opposed the motion. He said that the House was in danger of being led blindly and inconsiderately, from misdirected feelings, to commit a grand injustice towards one of the most illustrious men of his country. With respect to presents, on which the burthen of the accusation lay, he argued, that there were some, indeed many, situations, wherein the receipt of presents was justifiable upon every principle of disinterested integrity: and such, he contended, they were in the present instance, where a great capital had been saved from the horrors of pillage, or military contribution; and where signal services had been rendered to a sovereign Prince, who had adopted only the ordinary means of showing his gratitude: they were justifiable both from the extraordinary circumstances of the case, and from the known customs and usages of the country. He largely expatiated on the deep obligations under which the nation lay to Lord Clive; and affirmed, that for the Parliament to accuse a man of delinquency, upon the necessarily partial report of a Select Committee, would be to accuse him without competent evidence, and to be guilty of an act of flagrant injustice.
Mr. Richard Fuller, one of the Committee, took a similar view of the case; and while he doubted the competency of the kind of evidence, declared that the latter part of the Committee's report was undoubtedly not true.
Lord North said that he was determined to attend to every part of the evidence, and to judge of its effect; that any abuse of public authority was of pernicious example; and that the glory which surrounded such presents, did not, if they were illegal, render them less culpable. The high example would in its effects be only the more pernicious;—"Jupiter hoc faxit; ego homuncio non faciam."
Lord Clive, in the course of the debate, made a long defence of his conduct[197]: "Sir, after rendering my country the service which I think I may, without any degree of vanity, claim the merit of; and after having nearly exhausted a life full of employment, for the public welfare and the particular benefit of the East India Company, I little thought that such transactions would have agitated the minds of my countrymen in proceedings like the present, tending to deprive me not only of my property and the fortune which I have fairly acquired, but of that which I hold more dear to me—my honour and reputation." He in the first place solicited the patient indulgence of the House, while he corrected some facts which had been erroneously stated. He then went through the reports of the Committees, on which the charges were founded, and examined the different passages that concerned him. He justified himself in regard to all his acts, civil and political; and maintained that his whole conduct had been not only open and undisguised, but perfectly legal, and above all blame. On the principal charges, he read extracts of the Nabob's letter to him as President of the Select Committee, of the Committee's letter to the Directors, and finally of the Directors' letter containing their full approbation of his proceedings. He entered minutely into the circumstances of each charge, and observed that, trained in the school of war and politics as he had been for twenty years, he was now improving in the school of philosophy, and, if patience was a virtue, he had no doubt of soon being very virtuous indeed. He said that the present charges arose out of the wretched state of the Company's affairs; the Directors and Government would willingly shift the blame from themselves. He enlarged on the misconduct of the Directors; and arraigned the unpardonable remissness of former administrations, in neglecting the affairs of India; that mismanagement abroad was founded on mismanagement at home. He pointed out the malevolence and artifice of his enemies, and the low and insidious means by which he had been assailed; that when he went out to India the last time, he had promised not to add a shilling to his fortune, directly or indirectly, and this engagement, he declared to God, he had religiously observed.
He complimented Lord North ironically on his vast abilities displayed in the bargain which he had driven with the Company: that he was the lion, the Company the jackal, or lion's provider: that he had already seized on three quarters of its prey; and no doubt the lion, next time that it returned hungry to its den, would seize the remaining quarter also. That he stood there an independent man, and would give Government every honourable assistance, where he thought them right; but further he would not go: that as to the Company, he lamented their situation: they had been long tampered with by quacks till, reduced to an absolute consumption, they had thrown themselves on Parliament, the only physician who could effect a cure. He said, that for two years past the Directors had kept the affairs of the Company a secret, while they feasted at taverns, and employed a man[198], whom they allowed 400l. a year, to think for them: that meanwhile their expenses in India were increasing extravagantly beyond what they were when he left it. He complained that the malevolence employed against him, reduced him to the necessity of being the herald of his own fame. "I have served my country and the Company faithfully; and had it been my fortune to be employed by the Crown, I should not have been in the situation I am in at present; I should have been differently rewarded: no retrospect would have been had to sixteen years past, and I should not have been forced to plead for what is dearer than life—my reputation. My situation, Sir, has not been an easy one for these twelve months past; and though my conscience never could accuse me, yet I felt for my friends, who were involved in the same censure as myself. Sir, not a stone has been left unturned, where the least probability could arise of discovering something of a criminal nature against me. The two Committees, Sir, seem to have bent the whole of their inquiries to the conduct of their humble servant, the Baron of Plassey, and I have been examined by the Select Committee more like a sheep-stealer than a member of this House. I am sure, Sir, if I had any sore places about me, they would have been found; they have probed 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. The public records have been ransacked for proofs against me; and the late Deputy Chairman of the India Company, a worthy member of this House, has been very assiduous, indeed so assiduous in my affairs, that really, Sir, it appears that he has entirely neglected his own. As for punishments, which have been spoken of as necessary, I have a plan to propose which I think may be of great use. The three Jacobite heads which were lately upon Temple Bar have tumbled down, but the poles remain; and as there is no probability of the heads being replaced, for Jacobitism seems at an end, (at least some people have strangely altered their opinions of late years,) there can be no farther occasion for them on that score: now, I would propose that the heads of three East Indians be stuck up in their stead, in terrorem, and that my head, by way of pre-eminence, be put in the middle; and as his Majesty has given me a title to supporters, I cannot pitch upon more proper ones than the heads of the late Chairman and Deputy to be placed one on each side, on the other two poles."
He next examined the regulations proposed by Ministers for India, and the measures of the Directors; and asserted that they had improvidently, in a country peculiarly liable to temptation, abolished all the lawful rewards of the service, and left the country at the mercy of a handful of boys. He proceeded to examine the question of presents. He had always recommended, approved of, and enforced the covenants against them. He considered these covenants as indispensable in the present state of the country, when we were its rulers; but even then, to render them efficient, the public servants must have within their view the prospect of an honourable and attainable independence. Wealth and weakness can never safely be placed beside poverty and power. As for presents in themselves, he was firmly of opinion that, in honourable cases, it was not improper to receive them: that they were only improper in dishonourable cases: that presents had been allowed to be received from the earliest days of the Company; they had been received uninterruptedly for the space of a hundred and fifty years, and by men who sat in the Direction; they were a lawful part of the social system of the East. "In the early part of my life," he continued, "my labours were without emolument or laurels; and I hope the House cannot think that I ought not to be rewarded for my services to my country in the latter part of it. When I was first employed by the Company, their affairs abroad were in a condition much to be lamented. Misfortunes attended them in every part of their settlements, and the Nabobs looked with a jealous eye upon the small privileges and possessions they then enjoyed; though small, in danger everyday of being wrested from them. Their fears and weakness were surrounded by dangers on every side. In this critical situation it pleased God to make me the instrument of their deliverance." He drew a rapid and bold sketch of his transactions in India, in particular of his proceedings in regard to Suraj-u-Dowlah and Omichund: he asserted that the former was dethroned for his breach of faith, and as a necessary and lawful measure of self defence; that the latter was only entangled in the toils of intrigue and treachery woven by himself: that Admiral Watson expressed his thorough approbation of the proceedings in the revolution, and the means by which it was obtained; and he read the letter signed by him in conjunction with the Committee to that effect: that, great as his fortune was, it bore no proportion to what he might have made it: that not a sixpence was received from the inhabitants of Moorshedabad, who came to offer contributions to deliver them from being plundered by a victorious army: that his jaghire was not received in 1757, at the time of the revolution, as had been erroneously represented; it was not received till 1759, two years after. He described his attack on the Dutch armament, which he destroyed, as well as their army, and that at a time when most of his property was in the hands of the Dutch Company; a fact that showed no want of zeal for the honour and interest of the service, even at the imminent risk of ruin to his own fortune. He enumerated the marks of honour which he had received: he read the letters of the Court of Directors in approbation of the revolution, and of his conduct in it. "These, Sir," he exclaimed, "are surely sufficient certificates of my behaviour, and of the proceedings of that revolution; and, whatever the House may think of them, will remain an everlasting approbation of my conduct from those persons who alone employed me, and whose servant I was. A late Minister (Lord Chatham), whose abilities have been an honour to his country, and whom this House will ever revere, will, I am sure, come to your bar, and not only tell you how highly he thought of my services at the time, but also what his opinion is now."
He adverted to his second government, undertaken at the express desire of the Company; the toils and difficulties he had to encounter, and which he overcame; and the thanks and congratulations solemnly lavished upon him, in a special audience appointed for the express purpose, at Leadenhall Street, on his return. "These, Sir," said he, "were circumstances, certainly, that gave me a full satisfaction, and a ground to think that my conduct in every instance was approved of. After such certificates as these, Sir, am I to be brought here like a criminal, and the very best parts of my conduct construed into crimes against the state? Is this the reward that is now held out to persons who have performed such important services to their country? If it is, Sir, the future consequences that will attend the execution of any important trust committed to the persons who have the care of it, will be fatal indeed; and I am sure the Noble Lord upon the Treasury Bench, whose great humanity I revere, would never have consented to the resolution that passed the other night, if he had thought on the dreadful consequences that would attend them. Sir, I cannot say that I either sit or rest easy when I find, by that extensive resolution, that all I have in the world is confiscated, and that no one will take my security for a shilling. These, Sir, are dreadful apprehensions to remain under; and I cannot look upon myself but as a bankrupt. I have not any thing left that I can call my own, except my paternal fortune of 500l. per annum, and which has been in the family for ages past. But upon 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,—that if the definition of the honourable 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 property, to be questioned, and considered as obtaining it unwarrantably, is hard indeed! and 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. My enemies may take from me what I have; they may, as they think, make me poor, but I will 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 the House,—that, when they come to decide upon my honour, they will not forget their own."
After some debate, the farther consideration of the motion was deferred, and it was ordered that evidence should be heard at the bar.
On the 21st of May, on the motion of Colonel Burgoyne, certain witnesses were examined. Lord Clive's evidence before the Committee was read; on which his Lordship made a short speech, concluding with the words, "Take my fortune, but save my honour," and immediately retired from the House.
The three propositions which had been carried by Colonel Burgoyne, on the 10th of May, though plainly, and by direct inference, affecting, and even aimed at, Lord Clive, had, however, been couched in loose general terms. Certain principles being given, and the existence of some abuses not disputed, certain consequences inevitably followed. The House was sensible, from the Reports, and from other sources, that great enormities had been committed in India; and, desirous to show its disapprobation and censure, willingly suffered itself to be led to acquiesce in these resolutions. But when, leaving generalities, Colonel Burgoyne called upon them to mark an individual as being concerned in, and indeed as the guilty leader in these offences, the ground was changed. They were brought back from generalities to special facts and to individuals, and found the necessity of proceeding cautiously in their conclusions. The generous feelings which in the one case had combated in favour of the motions, were now silent, or even enlisted on the side of the accused. A careful and cautious examination of facts and of character was necessary; and inquiry showed that the evidence was loose and defective, for the most part exparte, and often depending on circumstances of time, country, or situation that changed its nature. The man attacked was one of the most illustrious of his age, who by his exalted talents had raised himself, early in life, to the highest rank in his nation; whose gallant deeds in the field of battle every Englishman had admired and gloried in; who had retrieved the falling fortunes of his country, and, by his military achievements and his political talents, had added to its dominion a large empire, one of the richest in the world, which that country had not thrown from her with disdain, as gained by illegal or unjustifiable means, but cherished as one of her noblest possessions, the richest jewel in the British crown; that wealth which he had gained, he had enjoyed with honour and dignity, unchallenged for sixteen years, though now it was to be wrenched from him by the application of rules which had no existence in the country in which it was acquired. Doubts began to arise, whether a grand injustice was not about to be inflicted by England on one of the greatest and noblest of her sons: the circumstances of personal excitement under which the evidence had been collected could not be overlooked; and the more carefully the application of that evidence was made to the case, on the principles of general justice and universal policy, the more did it appear that there was a danger of making the British Parliament the instrument of flagrant injustice and ingratitude.
When the question itself came on, and the direct charges brought against Lord Clive were before the House, Mr. Stanley moved that the words, "And in so doing, the said Robert Lord Clive abused the powers with which he was intrusted, to the evil example of the servants of the public, and to the dishonour and detriment of the State," should be omitted; and was seconded by Mr. Richard Fuller, who carried his amendment farther back into the body of the motion, and proposed that the words, "through the influence of the powers with which he was intrusted, as a Member of the Select Committee, and Commander-in-chief of the British forces," should also be omitted. A very warm and long debate ensued between those who supported the original motion, and those who were in favour of the amendment, expressive of mere undisputed facts, which left the motion in this form: "That it appears to this House, that the Right Honourable Robert Lord Clive, Baron of Plassey in the kingdom of Ireland, about the time of the deposition of Suraj-u-Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier on the musnud, did obtain and possess himself of 2 lacs of rupees as Commander-in-chief, a further sum of 2 lacs and 80,000 rupees as Member of the Select Committee, and a further sum of 16 lacs or more under the denomination of a private donation; which sums, amounting together to 20 lacs and 80,000 rupees, were of the value, in English money, of 234,000l." And the motion, in this form, was finally carried, on a division of 155 to 95.[199]
It was then moved, "That Lord Clive did, in so doing, abuse the powers with which he was intrusted, to the evil example of the servants of the public;" but the motion was rejected without a division.
A motion was finally made, about five in the morning, "That Robert Lord Clive did, at the same time, render great and meritorious services to his country;" which passed unanimously.[200]
Such was the termination of these Parliamentary proceedings, so far as regarded Lord Clive. It may be proper to remark, that in the meanwhile various bills regarding India affairs were pushed forward. The plan proposed and carried through by the Government, at that important crisis, though it was intended to be a final settlement of the constitution of the Company's government, and though it contained many changes, and some very beneficial regulations, was still only a palliative. A loan of 1,400,000l. was granted to relieve the Company from their immediate difficulties; the Company's dividend being restrained to 6 per cent. until it was repaid, and to 7 per cent. until their bond debt was reduced to 1,500,000l. The public was not to participate in the profits of the Company till this latter event, when three fourths of the net surplus profits of the Company at home, above the sum of 8 per cent. on their capital stock, was to be paid into the Exchequer for the use of the public, the remaining fourth to be set aside for reducing the Company's debt, and other purposes specified: the territorial acquisitions to remain with the Company for six years more: the Court of Directors were in future to be elected for four years, six members going out annually: no Proprietor was to vote at the election who had not possessed his stock for twelve months, and the qualification was to be 1000l. instead of 500l.: a new Court of Justice was established at Calcutta, consisting of a Chief Justice and three Puisne Judges; and a superiority given to the Presidency of Bengal over the others. The Council was to consist of a Governor-General and four Members, to be named in the first instance by Parliament; and, in pursuance of the act, Mr. Hastings was appointed Governor-General, with General Clavering, Colonel Monson, Mr. Barwell, and Mr. Francis in Council.
It is clear that these enactments were quite insufficient to remedy the evils complained of; and India was accordingly doomed for several years more to pay the penalty of this timid and inefficient legislation. The truth is, that the Ministry were conscious that their knowledge of Indian affairs was extremely imperfect; and that the task of legislation for a distant empire, if not beyond their powers, at least required more leisure than they were able or disposed to pay to it. The spirit of the times, too, was adverse to bold or extensive legislation, and delighted more in temporary expedients and palliatives. America could hardly have remained much longer united to Britain; but this temper, common to many successive administrations, had much influence on the time and manner of the separation.
The complimentary resolution, passed unanimously by the House, closed the Parliamentary proceedings in which Lord Clive was personally concerned. In a letter to Mr. Hastings, the new Governor-General, written some months afterwards, he alludes to them. "All the Reports of the Committees are published," says he[201], "and will of course be transmitted to you. A few envious and resentful individuals turned the whole attack upon me, and aimed at the ruin of my fortune and reputation. But the justice of the House of Commons defeated their intentions, and, by a great majority, passed a vote that I had rendered great and essential services to this country. The next session will show whether any other individuals are to be attacked; but I am of opinion the Parliament will rest satisfied with the late act, and leave the rest to the Governor and Council. I congratulate you on the distinction you are honoured with, in being the first Governor-General; and hope your colleagues will be unanimous in acting for the public good." But it is not surprising that the harassing persecution which he had sustained, and the ignoble charges brought and insinuated against him, should have made a deep and gloomy impression on his lofty mind. It has been remarked that, "Although, throughout this inquiry, Lord Clive displayed the greatest firmness and magnanimity, his mind never recovered its proper equilibrium. Wedded to glory, and pluming himself upon those actions which had elevated him to an unparalleled degree of fame, and unexampled grandeur of fortune, he could ill brook the necessity of defence, and felt as an ignominy the task of pleading for his character and property. He, upon whose pleasure had so often depended the fate of sovereigns and of states, who might with truth be styled 'the setter up and puller down of kings,' sickened at the recollection of that ingratitude which degraded him to the position of a culprit."[202]
Few men have ever endured so severe and piercing a scrutiny into all their words and actions; and his situation has, in one respect, been different from that of most other great men, who were only subjects. He had been in some measure placed in the situation of an absolute sovereign. He not only held the military command, but directed, with more power than is enjoyed by most sovereign princes, the civil, financial, and political measures that emanate from supreme authority. He not only executed, but planned, and was the source as well as the instrument of action. He had to answer for wars undertaken, treaties made and broken, and severities exercised. He was not so much in the situation of a Marlborough or a Wellington, receiving certain orders, and following his judgment in executing them, as of a sovereign prince—a Frederic, a Bonaparte, an Alexander, who could act with nearly despotic authority in the execution of their designs. They, privileged by their rank, could only be called upon to answer at the tribunal of posterity. But, from his situation, a private man, a subject, and the servant of a trading company, his accusers blended together his different characters. There is always something, in the slightest accusation of delinquency in pecuniary matters, which is revolting to a generous mind. This his enemies saw, and attempted to fix on the most liberal of men; trusting that, however complete the justification, some taint of the accusation would remain. It was not enough to him that he had been acquitted and applauded; he brooded over the indignity of having been accused. Nor was the public ingratitude, from which he suffered, the less grievous, that it was common to him with the great men of every age; although proudly conscious of his own integrity, and of the solid glory of his achievements and labours, he felt that he could trust his fame to distant countries and future times.
And distant countries had already begun to do justice to his great actions. A few days after the rising of Parliament, he received the following letter from Mr. Wedderburn, which the reader will not be displeased to see entire:—
"My dear Lord,
"Mr. Stuart informs me, that he has sent your Lordship a letter he received from the gentleman[203] who has the care of the Duke of Hamilton at Geneva, expressing the desire that Voltaire has to be informed of the affairs of the East Indies, and to celebrate the great actions that have been done there.
"I took the precaution of desiring Mr. Clive to load his trunk with the most important papers that are printed on that subject; but it has occurred to me, that he would deliver them with a better effect if they were introduced by a few lines from your Lordship, or, at least, a written message to the old gentleman. I don't know whether Mr. King is at Walcot: he would be delighted to have an occasion of addressing his favourite author on this subject. Lady Clive, I am afraid, will scruple at a correspondence with so free a writer; but, whatever mischief his works may do for a better state, in this world they are very entertaining: and that justice, which is everywhere your due to fame, will have a very good effect in England, coming from the pen of a Frenchman, writing at the foot of the Alps.
"I have seen no creature but lawyers for a fortnight past, and I know no news. Robert desires I would make his apology to your Lordship, for suffering himself to be seduced by me, to give me one day at Mitcham, which I am sure you will forgive. Mrs. W. joins me in compliments to Lady Clive and Miss Ducarrel; and I am,
"My dear Lord,
"Yours most sincerely,
"Al. Wedderburn.
"Lincoln's Inn Fields,
"9th July, 1773."
The result of this application from the most celebrated writer of the age does not appear. Several letters to Lord Clive, written from different parts of Europe, from foreigners, the posterity of the present age, some of them from persons quite unknown to him, show how widely his fame had spread over the Continent.
Immediately on the rising of Parliament in June, the state of his health carried him to Bath. After a short residence there and at Walcot, he was advised again to visit the Continent. While in London he was consulted by Ministers; and, though he believed that he had cause to complain of the conduct of Lord North in the late transactions, he was still willing, when called upon, to give him his opinion on Indian concerns. Indeed, during the whole course of his life, he was ever most ready and forward to communicate freely the full stores of his experience and reflection, not only to the Court of Directors, but to every administration that he imagined to be disposed to avail themselves of them. He had, in the preceding year, imparted to the Ministry his plan for improving the management of the Company's affairs, both in India and Europe; and by a letter of Lord North's to his Lordship, of the 9th of November this year, soliciting his interest in favour of Mr. Manship, in an India House election, it appears that Lord Clive had met him just before at Bushy Park, and given his sentiments in conversation on the important question of the instructions proper to be given to the Governor-General and Council of Bengal, who had been recently appointed by the Act of Parliament.
The fatigues of two anxious and exhausting sessions had not improved his health, so shattered before. How long he remained abroad does not appear. During the subsequent session, as all attempts to fix upon him any act of criminality during his first government of Bengal had totally failed, some feeble and malignant efforts were made, through the public papers, to throw suspicion on his conduct during his last administration there. But they were too miserable to be persisted in, or to produce any effect; and were only the last dregs of enmity, meant, perhaps, less to answer their apparent object than to vex and harass the sensitive feelings of a noble mind.[204]
During the remainder of 1773, and in the following year, which was the last of his life, he seems to have very much relaxed in the frequency of his epistolary correspondence. But it is a characteristic of his native warmth of attachment, and steady regard for his friends, that a great proportion of the letters written during that period consists of recommendatory letters. Some of them contain instances of very earnest and active exertions in behalf of those whom he befriended. He seems, in particular, to have used great exertions to procure the government of Bombay for General Carnac; and one letter, written only six weeks before his death, is addressed to Lord North, to forward the interest of his friend Mr. Strachey.
Though the ministers of the Company which he had so nobly served, had requited his services with persecution and ingratitude, the injury that most deeply wounds the most generous spirit, he had many sources of happiness around him. He was happy in his family; he had a numerous circle of friends warmly attached to him; he had a princely fortune and generosity to use it. He enjoyed a reputation of the highest class as a soldier and a statesman. His political influence was considerable; he was still little beyond the middle period of active life. But his residence in India, and the fatigues, mental and bodily, which he had undergone there, had long since ruined his constitution. He suffered from a derangement of the liver, the fatal disease of warm countries, which exposed him to frequent and violent attacks of bile. But above all, he had been subject to excruciating attacks of pain from gall-stones, attended with severe spasms, both before he left India and since his return. To moderate these, he had long called in the dangerous aid of opium; a remedy which, while it alleviates the present suffering, is generally followed by corresponding depression of spirits, and requires to be used in constantly increasing quantities. He had been driven to the use of this drug when first in India, and probably had never abandoned it, as a few days after his last return to Bengal, writing to Mr. Billers[207], the chief at Patna, he asks him to procure for him five or six pounds of the purest opium that could be got: "As this medicine," continues he, "is entirely for my own use, and I find great difficulty in procuring any other than what has been adulterated, I depend on your judgment in purchasing some that is perfectly good and genuine." When he first went to France, we have seen that he had been able in some measure to reduce the quantity which he had been in the habit of using during his previous illness. In November, 1774, when in Berkeley Square, he had a violent return of his complaint. On the 21st and 22d he endured extreme agony, and had recourse, for relief, to powerful doses of laudanum. Though he had perfect command of his faculties, he testified much impatience under his sufferings. It is probable that the excessive acuteness of the paroxysms of pain, arising from the gall-stones, combined with the effects of the medicine which he had used, acting on his feverish irritability, led to the melancholy event which ensued. The feelings of disappointed hope, and wounded dignity, which had long haunted his haughty soul, were but little calculated to soothe him at such a moment. He expired on the 22d of November, soon after he had completed his forty-ninth year, and was buried in his native parish of Moreton-Say.
Lord Clive was one of those extraordinary men who give a character to the period and country in which they live. His name cannot be erased from the history of India, nor from that of Britain. Born in the rank of a private gentleman, and launched out early in life into the wide sea of Indian adventure, he soon far outstript all his competitors in the race of fortune and fame. He was trained in the best of schools, a state of danger, of suffering, and activity. He could not be said to have any master in the art of war; he was, to adopt the language of the great Chatham, "a heaven-born general;" and it was by the boldness and novelty of his measures, the impetuosity of his onset, and the imperturbable obstinacy of his defence, that he confounded his enemies, and changed the hesitating troops under his command into a band of heroes. He left nothing to chance: he foresaw and provided for every thing. Victory seemed to attend him wherever he turned, and no enterprise was too arduous where he was the leader. The same success and the same renown which distinguished him in the Carnatic, attended him in Bengal. From the date of the battle of Plassey, his reputation in that country was established; and all his negotiations with the native princes were from that day forward concluded more by the influence of his great name, than by the energy of his determined character.
But impetuous and ardent as was the tone of his mind, it is a remarkable part of his praise that he never suffered it to forsake the control of moderation; that he was always able to check and restrain it, and with a keen and cool glance to draw the line between the romantic and the useful, between the dictates of an intoxicating success, and that grand but practicable scheme of conquest and policy, which could give security and permanence to what had been achieved. After he had subdued the rich provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, and had become, in fact, the arbiter of India, a wide scope was opened for his ambition. He was strongly urged by the Emperor of Hindostan to march to Delhi to restore him to the capital and throne of his ancestors. No project could be more alluring to a bold and ambitious man like Clive; and he saw and acknowledged that it was perfectly within his power. But it was anticipating the events of forty years. His well regulated mind perceived that great and flattering as was the glory of such a transaction, and high as it would raise his name, it would be contrary to sound policy and hurtful to his country. In the very midst of his career of victory he took every occasion to inculcate moderation. He pointed out that Bengal and its dependent provinces, we were able to govern, and could defend by a small well disciplined army, leaving a surplus revenue such as hardly any other country on earth could yield; but that the moment we passed its frontiers and engaged in the contests of the native princes, our very success would be ruinous to our finances; and our armies and other establishments, which must be indefinitely enlarged, would more than swallow up all the produce both of our revenue and our trade. Succeeding events have strikingly confirmed the dictates of his foresight.
Those who would lessen his fame, by representing him as victorious only over Indian armies, forget, that he had the same success against the French and the Dutch, perhaps at that time the two most enlightened and bravest nations in Europe. But it was not at the head of armies alone that his talents were conspicuous. He was a remarkable man in all the circumstances of life. The truth is, that he always carried about with him the instrument of his success,—a fearless mind, acting on a sober and dispassionate view of human character, and directed to its object with undoubting confidence and unflinching resolution. Aided by his countrymen and by European discipline, he had performed much in the field against native armies. But his success was the same when he stood almost single against his countrymen, and against the soldiers whom he had led to victory. On his last return to Bengal, he found a whole settlement, from the chiefs and leading men, down to the last imported boy, combined to thwart and oppose him. The Governor, the Council, the heads of factories, the leading men in the civil service, were all hostile. Even of the few who had accompanied him as auxiliaries to the East, some tottered. The strongest of human motives, the love of power, the love of reputation, the love of money, were enlisted against him. But he had come determined to perform a great and arduous duty to his country, or to die in the exertion. So he often expresses himself. And though opposed by those who should have aided him, he commenced the odious and invidious work of reform, guided by perfect justice, but with undeviating firmness, and himself exhibiting the most conspicuous proofs of disinterestedness and devotion to his trust. In the course of eighteen months, by the use of unwilling and hostile instruments, supported by his own powerful genius, which spread a secret awe around him, he subdued the civil combination which had threatened to obstruct all the measures of Government, and to confirm and increase the evil effect of the vicious system that had previously prevailed, so destructive to the internal peace of the country, and to the beneficial management of its civil, its mercantile, and financial concerns.[208] The same commanding spirit was equally discernible in the bold front with which he met the demands of the army in mutiny. He did not seek to appease them by artful concessions, by holding out hopes, that at a future time their claims might be listened to. He came attended by a firm sense of right, an invincible mind, and by the lustre of his life of glory. He spoke to them only of duty and of submission, and he did not speak in vain. He punished the guilty; he pardoned those who had been misled. He may be said to have triumphed over the very engine of his own fame. Had a sceptic desired an irrefragable proof of the influence of individual superiority of mind, he could have devised none more decisive than those two instances in the life of this illustrious man.
It was an almost necessary consequence of the ardour of his temperament, that he was impatient of opposition. The measures of his government were in general all his own. He did not brook interference, and the ascendancy which he gained over all about him, seldom exposed him to it. In such cases he was often, not merely resolute, but stern. He had in a remarkable degree, what is an uniform attendant on successful talent, the faculty of distinguishing and employing men of merit. During his whole career, his friends were the most eminent men in the country, or within his reach; and what is an honourable distinction, and throws a strong light on his character, they will be found to be the most distinguished, not only for abilities, but for virtue.
So much has already been said of the charges brought against him, on the ground of the presents which he received, that it is hardly necessary to revert to the subject. The accusation is very abhorrent to the lofty and generous character of the man. It has been remarked, that one remarkable feature of his acquisitions is, that they were all of the same description, either his share of prize-money, or of what stood in lieu of it, or gifts bestowed by the prince as a reward for eminent services: for the service first, of raising him to the throne, and next, of securing him in it. All his acquisitions were directly from the state or the prince. These, it may be asserted, were only the natural result of the customs and notions of the time and country; and certainly not more than the Nabob would have bestowed, or been expected to bestow, on any one of his own subjects who had rendered him a similar service. And when we consider the rewards voted by the British Parliament to illustrious public servants, who, having received the pay, the emoluments, the rank, and honours of the service, had no claim on the public purse, but public gratitude, we shall probably be disposed to allow, that the gratifications bestowed on Lord Clive, in lieu of all these, as they were perfectly in unison with the usages of the country where they were granted, were neither immoderate nor ill-timed, but such as the situation fully justified.
"Lord Clive's second appointment to India," says Sir John Malcolm[209], "though called for by the Proprietors and the public, was warmly opposed by a considerable party in the Direction; and his enemies in that body, recruiting their strength from all whom he had disgraced or punished, subsequently obtained a majority. Neither their efforts, however, nor the combined talent which was arrayed against him in Parliament, could daunt his courage; and he defended his own character with a manliness and eloquence that gave him a complete triumph over all his opponents.
"The character of Lord Clive is associated with the rise of our power in India, and in that view merits much of our attention. Whether we consider his military or political career; the knowledge he displayed of the natives of India, their institutions and government; his efforts to introduce order and principle into what was shapeless and without system; the promptness and courage with which he quelled a mutinous and insubordinate spirit in the military and civil officers of government; his use of victory, the efforts he made and recommended to consolidate the strength, and to improve the administration of our empire in the East; we are equally astonished at the extraordinary extent of the powers of his mind. Nevertheless, no man was ever more violently assailed and calumniated by his cotemporaries. When events, over which he had no control, disappointed those hopes which his successes had raised, his opponents took advantage of the change in the public mind, to reproach him with results, which were chiefly to be attributed to their own factions and mismanagement. The prejudices excited by their efforts have been continued by orators and authors, who, treating Indian subjects without reference to those local circumstances and considerations which peculiarly embarrass them, have pleased and satisfied general and uninformed men, by reducing the most complex points of policy to an easy abstract question. The necessity under which those who exercise power in India act, the comparative dangers they have to encounter or avoid, the means they have of executing one plan, or the want of means for another, the feelings and character of princes, and of nations, which they may flatter or offend, are to such persons matters of little consequence. Their conclusions are drawn from simpler sources, and they reject, as prejudiced and polluted, that minute information and local experience, which, if admitted, might destroy their favourite theories, or cast a doubt upon the validity of those fixed rules and principles by which they consider that the wisdom of every measure ought to be tried and decided.
"With these persons the scene of Indian warfare and policy is degraded to a low level, and the actors reduced to insignificance when compared with those who appear upon the stage in the western hemisphere. Nothing in India, if we refer to such authorities, is upon a great scale, except the errors and crimes of British rulers, to the actions of all of whom they apply a standard framed for a wholly different state of society and government. According to such self-constituted judges, the claim of Lord Clive to the admiration of posterity is very equivocal. But his fame will rise the more the particulars of his eventful life are made known. These will prove that his qualities as a statesman almost surpassed those he displayed as a military commander."
If the opinion of those whom he governed can have any weight in forming our judgment, it is certain that by the natives of India, no incurious observers of character, and who felt the influence of his virtues or defects, he was held in the highest respect and reverence. They admired his success in war, and during his government enjoyed all the ease and security, which it is the first object of government to bestow. Every attempt at oppression or injustice he checked with inexorable firmness. There were indeed complaints heard, but they were the complaints, not of natives who suffered, but of his countrymen, whom his vigour restrained within the limits of justice and right.
His habits in the field were those of a soldier, and simple. Fond of rapid marches and bold attacks, he was an enemy to those incumbrances of needless baggage which so often impede the operations of armies. He shared in the hardships of his soldiers, and was much among them. He trusted for respect, even among the natives of the East, who are supposed to worship pomp, not to parade, but to the splendour diffused around him by his exploits and his renown. The translator of the Seir Mutaqherin, himself a Frenchman, draws a lively contrast between his habits, and those of the justly celebrated Bussy, who, probably on system, adopted a different course. "M. de Bussy," says he, "always wore embroidered clothes, or brocade, with an embroidered hat; and, in days of ceremony, embroidered shoes of black velvet. He was seen in an immense tent, full sufficient for six hundred men, of about thirty feet in elevation; at one end of this tent he sat on an arm-chair, embroidered with the king's arms, placed upon an elevation, which last was covered by a crimson carpet of embroidered velvet: at his right, but upon back chairs only, sat a dozen of his officers. Over against him, his French guard on horseback, and behind these, his Turkish guards; his table, always in plate, was served with three, often with four services. To this French magnificence he added all the parade and pageant of Hindoostany manners and customs, a numerous set of tents, a pish-qhana; always on an elephant himself, as were all his officers. He was preceded by chopdars on horseback, and by a set of musicians, singing his feats of chivalry, with always two head-chopdars reciting his eulogium. Colonel Clive always wore his regimentals in the field, was always on horseback, and never rode in a palanquin; he had a plentiful table, but no ways delicate, and never more than two services. He used to march mostly at the head of the column, with his aid-de-camps, or was hunting at the right and left. He never wore silks but in town."[210]
It is to be regretted that, after his return to England, he was induced to enter into the disputes of the India House. They could hardly, in any case, have proved satisfactory; and they certainly, in their consequences, served to embitter his life. Yet it may be said that it was difficult for one who had acted so distinguished a part in the affairs of the Company, at once to renounce all active concern in them; and that he had a natural desire, both to assist in some degree in the management of affairs which he was so well qualified to direct, and to promote, by his influence, the interest of his friends. The parliamentary influence which he acquired must have been very considerable. It would seem that it extended, in different degrees, to Shropshire, Montgomery, Radnor, Monmouth, Shrewsbury, Worcester, Bishops-Castle, Ludlow, Pontefract, to Clare in Ireland, and probably to several other places.
In his politics, though a warm admirer of Lord Chatham, he was a steady adherent of his friend Mr. George Grenville, and of moderate Whig principles. He seldom spoke in the House, except on Indian affairs, and especially in justification of his own conduct. From the few specimens of his speeches that have been preserved, it would appear that they were full of matter, closely argumentative, bold, manly, and energetic. He seems to have acquired more ease in the management and expression of his ideas than could have been expected from one whose previous pursuits had been so different: his power lay in strong facts and decided principles, plainly but vigorously expressed. Mr. Beaufoy informs us, that "when the attack upon his conduct had called into action the powers of his mind, his eloquence was such as has not been often surpassed."[211] One who knew him, speaking of the same period, says, "Not long after this event I was fortunate enough to meet the great Lord Chatham at the chase, near Bonnet, and to hear him declare that Lord Clive's speech on that subject was one of the most finished pieces of eloquence he had ever heard in the House of Commons." It was the natural eloquence of a powerful mind thrown into motion by unworthy accusations, of a man who was master of his subject, eager to persuade, and who used the simplest words to express the strongest ideas.
In private life he was much beloved, and possessed the warm affection of a wide circle of friends, many of whom had been deeply indebted to his generosity; for no man ever employed a princely fortune with more liberality. He was steady in his attachments, and seldom lost a friend; Mr. Vansittart, who was sore harassed between his friendship for Clive and his connection with Mr. Sulivan, is perhaps the only instance of consequence. As he was a steady friend, he was a resolute enemy, but without vindictiveness. His gift of 70,000l. for the support of officers and men invalided in the Company's service in India, must rank among the noblest of living benefactions.
"His person," we are told, "was of the largest of the middle size; his countenance inclined to sadness, and the heaviness of his brow imparted an unpleasing expression to his features. It was a heaviness that arose, not from the prevalence of the unsocial passions (for of these few men had a smaller share), but from a natural fulness in the flesh above the eyelid. His words were few, and his manner among strangers was reserved. Yet it won the confidence of men, and gained admission to the heart. Among his intimate friends he had great pleasantry and jocoseness, and on some occasions was too open."[212]
By his wife, Margaret Maskelyne, he left Edward, the present Earl of Powis, born March 7. 1754; Rebecca, born September 15. 1760; Charlotte, born January 15. 1762; Margaret, born August 15. 1763, and Robert, born August 31. 1769.
At the time of his death he was Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the counties of Salop and of Montgomery, Major-General in the East Indies, and representative in Parliament for the town of Shrewsbury. He was a member of the Royal Society, and had been honoured with the degree of Doctor of Laws.
India has produced many illustrious men both in his time and since; but none of them has yet obscured or equalled the fame of Clive.
Before concluding, it may be proper to say a few words as to his views of Indian policy; and it is not to be forgotten, that whatever he undertook during his residence in India, he effected. It is much to be regretted, that his health drove him out of the country, when he had nearly made up his mind to remain there another year; a period, short as it was, in which he might have done much to consolidate and give effect to the system which he had established. The state of the European population, eager to be rich, and fretting under every restraint placed on their cupidity, required a hand as firm and steady as his to keep it in check. It has, indeed, been affirmed, that he had no capacity for a comprehensive scheme, including any moderate anticipation of the future. This assertion seems to have been hazarded on very inadequate grounds. He made many communications at various times to the Ministry and to the Court of Directors. These, though chiefly confined to the local and temporary objects for which they were asked, to plans for remedying defects in the civil or military establishments, as they were felt, show no deficiency in comprehensive views, but are full of the deepest observation. It may be safely affirmed, that the views of no statesman of the times (if we except Burke, who is an exception to every thing,) contain more political and practical foresight directed to Indian affairs. And a proof of this is, that many of the plans which he at that early period proposed, have since been gradually adopted. He did not conceal his opinion either from his friends or in Parliament, that he saw no public body either in England or India duly competent to the administration of our concerns in the East. He early came to a conclusion that "the charters granted for the guidance of a limited company of merchants, could not be adequate to the government of an extensive empire."[213] At the same time, he justly regarded the British Ministry, the Court of Directors, and the Court of Proprietors, as all of them profoundly ignorant of Indian concerns, and as being, from their composition, devised for totally different objects, very unfit to direct them. These elements, however, could not be got rid of, and it was evident that any plan proposed must include them as a portion of it. He always contended, that the first step towards an improved management of our concerns in India must be a reform at home, in the constitution of the Court of Directors and Court of Proprietors. He proposed some changes, not because they were sufficient, but because they were practicable, and suggested that the Directors, instead of being changed annually, should remain in office for several years; and that the business, instead of coming on in the first instance before all, should be arranged in small Committees. He suggested, that two of the Directors should be appointed by the Crown, an idea in which we see the germ of the Board of Control. In India, he saw that Councils of sixteen equals, were hot-beds of dissension, rendered the satisfactory transaction of business impossible, and responsibility null, by diffusing it. He conceived, that a Council of not more than five persons was infinitely preferable; that the Government of Bengal should, in cases of exigency, have the power of issuing orders to the Governments of the other Presidencies; and that in certain cases the President should have the power, on his own responsibility, of acting contrary to the opinion of his Council: the higher classes of English, those concerned in the government, and at the head of departments, he wished to restrain from trade altogether, and to pay them ample allowances; to this purpose he would have devoted the proceeds of the Salt-tax, for such in reality, under another name, were the gains of the Society of Trade: if their large salaries did not make them honest, they at least left no pretence for dishonesty, and turned more strongly against them the moral feelings of their judges: the Company's civil servants he did not wish to employ in the lower details of the financial or judicial establishments: he was earnestly bent on changing as little of the native institutions as possible; to do at least no harm; to govern India by Indians; to leave things as they were till we saw our way, reserving for the English only the reins of government, the general superintendence, a controlling and directing power, and the command of the military force. The system which he found, and under which, as all Europeans then on the spot agreed, the country had reached a degree of prosperity hardly to be equalled elsewhere in the East, he wished to retain. In regard to the revenue, a matter of so much practical consequence to the happiness of every country, he held that the taxes were not to be extended beyond the state in which we found them, without the greatest caution; he suggested that Government should grant leases of land, to prevent the exactions to which the ryots were exposed in the laying on of the annual impost. To the natives he wished to leave the internal trade, confining the English to the foreign import and export trade, as formerly: he was anxious that the natives should have the entire management of their own concerns, undisturbed as far as possible by the intrusion of Europeans, whose misconduct, which in many instances had been carried to a grievous excess, there was at that time no judicial or political machinery for keeping in order. He did not, however, adopt the wild idea of introducing English laws into a country for which they had never been framed. With more wisdom than has even yet been shown by the Legislature, he recommended that the Company should be authorised to send out an Attorney-General with some able lawyers, (not certainly, however, the most proper persons, especially if a majority,) to new model and regulate the Courts of Justice, and that, with the assistance of the Governor-General and Council, they should form a system of regulations proper for our settlements, pointing out the defects that existed, as well as the proper remedies. He concluded with perfect truth, "that the attempt to introduce the English laws throughout our possessions in India would be absurd and impracticable." He foresaw, from the spirit of the times, that expense was the rock on which the Government was likely to split, and used every means in his power to raise barriers against it. It was partly this which made him recommend that we should confine ourselves to a rich but limited territory, a small army, and few but well-paid English servants, and not plunge into the wide sea of Indian politics. He foretold, that if every thing was to be done directly by Company's servants, and if the expenses of fortifications and cantonments continued on the extravagant scale then in operation, the revenues of India, far from affording a surplus to be conveyed to England, would not long suffice even to support our various establishments on the spot. His predictions were soon verified; though there was but an inconsiderable change in the amount of the actual revenue, yet the expenses of the army, of buildings, fortifications, commissariat of every department, joined to the ill-conducted wars at Madras, had, in the course of a few years, increased so much, that the large free produce which he had left was totally absorbed. Indeed, such is the natural course of human affairs; and the only question is, whether even an energy like his, could have rendered possessions so distant permanently productive. He saw the means of defending our possessions against the native powers, by well-timed attention to their operations; but the French, a more formidable enemy, had only recently lost their Indian possessions, and he looked forward to more imminent danger from their designs, especially if by their means the resistance, then only threatened in America, became successful: for that America, he observes, will sooner or latter become independent, there can be no question[214]: an observation which, in 1772, when both the Government and the nation looked upon any resistance to be made by the Americans as futile, evinced no common sagacity.
To examine the various plans which he furnished, both in India and Europe, for the improvement of the Company's affairs and establishments, as well as for the conduct of their external relations, though to one who traced the progress of Indian policy it might be no unimportant employment, would occupy more time than could be afforded in a Memoir like this. The materials are sufficiently ample. Lord Clive, even when on the worst terms with the managing servants of the Company, uniformly felt a strong attachment and warm gratitude to the body itself, to which his early feelings had bound him; and he was always ready to pour out his knowledge for its benefit. It was a subject in which he was at home, and he felt a laudable pleasure in the hopes of benefiting his early patrons, and the nations he had conquered and ruled, by the matured fruits of his observation and experience.