Orme ascribes Clive's disobedience to his "being convinced that the Nabob would never fulfil the terms of the treaty." The situation of this writer[172] gave him the completest means of forming a correct judgment; and the events which we have detailed fully prove, that from the day on which Chandernagore fell Clive could at no period have quitted the scene of action without an abandonment of the public interests. The facts already stated will also show that, as long as a hope existed of its practicability, he laboured to effect such a settlement as would enable him to return to Fort St. George.[173]
The next point on which the character and conduct of Clive have been arraigned, is the treatment of Omichund. The charges which have been brought against him on this ground are of a nature that require a clear understanding of the subject, which I shall endeavour to convey to the reader, that he may form his own opinion upon the whole question.
Omichund, who was a wealthy Hindu merchant, residing at Calcutta, was employed for some period in providing the Company's investment, and at the same time carried on large dealings on his own account; and was much connected, not only with Hindu merchants, but with the ministers of that religion at the court of Moorshedabad. The latter connection led to his occasional employment by the heads of the English factory, as a medium of communication with the ministry of the Nabob of Bengal.
The pre-eminence Omichund obtained, no doubt excited envy; and some of the accusations brought against him might have been fabricated; but a deterioration in the quality, and an increase of the price of the articles furnished by him to the Company, gave sufficient grounds to suspect some dishonest proceedings.
A new system[174] of providing the investment was adopted, and Omichund lost the profitable employ he had hitherto monopolized. Though fond of display, and maintaining a large establishment of followers, his ruling passion was avarice. The loss he sustained by this change rankled in his mind, and was believed to have rendered him personally hostile to those entrusted with the Company's affairs at Calcutta. He appears, as he withdrew from intercourse with them, to have laboured to strengthen his connexion with the Nabob's court, and to have contracted a particular intimacy with the Rajah Dullub, whose son Kishendass, when he came to reside at Calcutta, was received and treated by Omichund with kindness and hospitality.
Suraj-u-Dowlah had endeavoured to persuade his predecessor, Aliverdi Khan, that the English were plotting against him, and giving protection to his subjects. The moment he succeeded to the throne, he demanded that Kishendass should be delivered up; but the extraordinary mode in which this demand was made, through a man[175] who came clandestinely to Calcutta, and went first to Omichund's house, gave rise to a belief that this communication was part of an intrigue to re-establish the importance of the latter person. With such impressions, and having intercepted, after the commencement of hostilities, a letter from Ram Bam Sing (the Nabob's head spy) to Omichund, advising him to remove his effects from Calcutta, it is not surprising that the Committee should have suspected their former contractor to be one of the principal instigators of the attack with which the English settlement was threatened. A conviction of this fact led to his being seized, and imprisoned in the fort. His guest Kishendass, and his brother-in-law[176] Hazarimul, were also made prisoners: the search after the latter was attended with circumstances of violence, which led to the death of several of Omichund's family.
When Calcutta was taken, Omichund and Kishendass were released, and treated with civility by the Nabob; a circumstance which confirmed some in the belief of their treachery: but, as the former lost money and property to an amount of four lacs of rupees, it is sufficiently obvious that, though he might have stimulated the Nabob's anger against the English, he never could have desired results which involved his own ruin. But it is a common fate of such intriguers to raise the storm they cannot control, and by whose fury they themselves are overwhelmed.