Rulers of India: Lord Clive

by G. B. Malleson

The debate was adjourned, and in the few days following some witnesses gave evidence at the bar of the House. Lord Clive's evidence, given before the Select Committee, was also read there. In the debate that followed, Mr. Stanley proposed to omit the words inculpating the honour of Clive. Mr. Fuller seconded this amendment, going even further, and striking out the sentence referring to the exercise of undue influence. His suggestion was accepted, and the House proceeded to discuss the amendment as so altered. After a protracted debate the division was called for, when it was found that 155 members had voted for the amendment and 95 against it. This victory stripped Burgoyne's resolutions of all their sting. Vainly did a member of his party attempt to restore the battle by moving that Clive had abused the powers intrusted to him in acting as he avowedly had acted. The House refused to re-open that question. Finally, at five o'clock in the morning, the House passed the following resolution, which consummated the defeat of Burgoyne: 'That Robert, Lord Clive, did, at the same time, render great and meritorious services to his country.' On this conclusion to the violent attacks on Clive, Lord Stanhope, well versed in Parliamentary procedure, thus wrote: 'Such a vote might be deemed almost a verdict of acquittal. Certainly, at least, it showed a wise reluctance to condemn. It closed the whole case, and Clive had no further Parliamentary attack to fear.'

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

⁷ Lord Stanhope relates a story regarding the manner of Clive's death, told by the Earl of Shelburne, afterwards the first Marquis of Lansdowne, to the person from whom he (Lord Stanhope) received it. 'It so chanced, that a young lady, an attached friend of his (Clive's) family, was then upon a visit at his house in Berkeley Square, and sat writing a letter, in one of its apartments. Seeing Lord Clive walk through, she called him to come and mend her pen. Lord Clive obeyed her summons, and taking out his penknife fulfilled her request; after which, passing on to another chamber, he turned the same knife against himself.'

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

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

INDEX

A

DAMS