It has been already stated that Clive received his jaghire in 1759: the grounds upon which it had been granted and accepted were, at that period, placed upon the records of Government. He had enjoyed it four years; receiving, annually, its amount from the Company. Immediately after his return to England an intimation was conveyed to him, by Mr. Sulivan, that the Secret Committee of the Directors desired to communicate with him regarding this grant. He expressed his willingness to meet them, and enter into any explanation; and, considering the jaghire only as a life-rent, he was disposed to meet any fair arrangement that could be suggested; but the subject had not been re-agitated. Three years had passed, and his revenue from this source was regularly paid by the Bengal Government to his agents in Calcutta. Under such circumstances, whatever he might have apprehended from the hostility of Mr. Sulivan, whom he had certainly provoked by an open and determined opposition, he could not but be astonished to hear that the first step the Directors took, after the election of 1763, was to transmit orders to the Bengal Government to stop all further payments on account of Lord Clive's jaghire, and to furnish them with an account of all sums which had been paid to that nobleman and his attornies since the date of the grant.

I find, among the MSS. in my possession, a short narrative of the progress of this transaction, which presents, in a very compressed form, a series of facts, a knowledge of which is quite essential to the clear understanding of this question; I shall therefore give them in the words of the writer.[[176]]

"By the ninth article of the treaty between the Company and Meer Jaffier, at the time of the revolution in 1757, certain lands to the south of Calcutta were ceded to the Company as perpetual renters, the Nabob reserving to himself the lordship and quit-rents, which amounted to near 30,000l. yearly; and the Company could never be legally dispossessed so long as they continued to pay that quit-rent. The Company farmed out these ceded lands for above 100,000l. a year, and paid the quit-rent regularly to the Nabob till the year 1759, when the Nabob, in consideration of the great services rendered him by Lord Clive, assigned over to his Lordship, for life, that quit-rent. The assignment passed through all the forms usual in the country; and Lord Clive became grantee of the rent, under the same authority, precisely, as the East India Company had become grantee of the lands. From this period the rent was duly paid to Lord Clive, instead of to the Nabob; nor was there any intermission of the payment until differences arose between the noble Lord and Mr. Sulivan. It was intimated to his Lordship that some scruples were entertained concerning any further payment; and Mr. Sulivan himself, at last informed him, that the Court of Directors were of opinion it ought to be retained for the Company's use. Lord Clive replied, that he was entitled to it as well by the laws of England as by the laws of India; that his right to the reserved rent was established upon the same authority as the Company's right to the ceded lands; that he was, notwithstanding, ready to concur in its devolving to the Company after he should have enjoyed the possession of it a reasonable number of years; and that he was desirous of a conference with the Court of Directors upon the subject, any day they might be pleased to appoint.

"It might have been imagined that the Court of Directors, if they had no other objects upon this occasion than the honour and interest of the Company and justice to an individual, would have paid some attention to an acquiescence of this nature. But their resolution, under the influence of their leader, was to resent the offence given them by the noble Lord in the attempt he was meditating against their power; and this was to be done, not by entering into the discussion of any terms of accommodation, in which each party, contending for the right above mentioned, might have met, but by putting an immediate stop to the payment of the jaghire, and leaving upon his Lordship the difficulties and vexation of recovering his property by a suit at law.

"There was, however, another secret motive to this violent and unjust measure. It happened that Lord Clive and his parliamentary friends had, for some time, acted in opposition to the court-party; and in this country, where ministers maintain their power by the inflicting of punishments, as well as by the distribution of rewards, it is no wonder that they should endeavour to weary out by oppression those whom they cannot allure by corruption. The Chairman of the East India Company was known to be at enmity with Lord Clive. Him, therefore, they considered as the aptest instrument with which the noble Lord might be tortured into a change of political conduct; and the plan of mutual resentment was no sooner resolved upon than executed.

"By one of the first ships which sailed for Bengal after the contested election, the Court of Directors sent orders to the Governor and Council, that they should no longer pay to the attornies of Lord Clive the rent granted him by Meer Jaffier, but that they should in future detain it in their hands, and carry it to the credit of the Company; and that they should transmit to the Court of Directors an exact account of all the sums already received by Lord Clive or his attornies on that head, as his Lordship's pretensions to the jaghire would be settled in England. The public letter conveying these orders assigned no reason for their being issued; but a private letter[[177]] from Mr. Sulivan to Mr. Vansittart, then Governor of Bengal, which was soon after produced on oath in the Court of Chancery, declared that the payment of the jaghire was stopped, because all cordiality between the Court of Directors and Lord Clive was at an end. This vindictive plea, confidentially communicated by the Chairman to his friend the Governor, could not, however, be set up in a court of equity in justification of a flagrant violation of right. The Company had, for some years, paid the jaghire without objection; and even at this time of litigation they neither claimed any title to it themselves nor pretended that there was any other claimant than the present possessor. It is not necessary to enumerate the absurd arguments and mean subterfuges to which the Court of Directors were reduced, in answer to the bill filed against them by Lord Clive in the Court of Chancery. It is sufficient to observe, that the principal reasons which they assigned for discontinuing the payment were, that the Company might one day or other be called to account by the Emperor[[178]] of Hindustan for the money paid under the head of this jaghire; that, therefore, Lord Clive was accountable to them even for the sums he had already received; that, if the Nabob, Meer Jaffier, had a right to grant the jaghire out of his own revenues, (which, however, the Court of Directors did not admit,) yet as that Nabob had been deposed by the Company's agents, the grant became of no effect.

"Such were the grounds upon which the right to the jaghire was contested; and we may judge how very futile they were, by the sentiments entertained of them by all the eminent lawyers of the time; for the Court of Directors consulted gentlemen of the first reputation in the profession. Among these were Mr. Yorke, the Attorney-general, and Sir Fletcher Norton, the Solicitor-general, the substance of whose opinions was, that it did not appear to be material to enter into such objections as might be made either by the Emperor of Hindustan or the successors of Meer Jaffier, to the form or substance of the grant of the lands to the Company, or of the reserved rent to Lord Clive; that they both claimed under the same granter, and that the East India Company could not raise an objection against the grant to Lord Clive, founded on the want of right and power in the Nabob, which would not impeach their own; that the question was to be considered, not upon the strict absolute words (according to the laws and constitution of the Moghul empire), but relatively as between the East India Company, the grantee of the lands from Meer Jaffier, and Lord Clive, the grantee of the same Nabob, of a rent issuing and reserved out of those lands when granted to the Company; that the question ought to be determined between his Lordship and the Company upon the same principles as the like question would be determined, arising between the owner of lands in England subject to a rent, and the grantee or assignee of that rent, in a case where both parties derived from the same original granter; that it was incumbent upon the Court of Directors, in this instance, to turn chancellors against themselves; and that it was for the honour of that great Company to act upon such principles, not only with foreign merchants, trading companies, and foreign states and sovereigns, but with their own servants.

"Such was the opinion of the greatest lawyers. But the Court of Directors, actuated, it should seem, rather by a spirit of resentment than by principles of equity, although they could not hope for a decision in their favour, determined still to withhold the jaghire, and to protract the judgment of Chancery by such stratagems or delays as the forms of judicial proceedings might chance to furnish them with."

Lord Clive complained (and apparently with great justice) of the mode in which this measure relating to his jaghire was to be carried into execution. The letter regarding it was sent to India without any intimation to him; and when, on hearing that the government of Bengal had been directed to stop all future payments to his agents, he applied to the Court of Directors for a copy of their proceedings in a case so deeply affecting his fortune and his reputation, they peremptorily refused compliance with his request.

Under such circumstances, he had nothing left but to institute (as he did) a suit in Chancery, and to give to his agents abroad the best general instructions his want of minute information enabled him. Mr. Vansittart, the Governor, was his principal agent; but conceiving that his duty to him and that to his superiors might clash, he desired him on such occurrence to devolve the charge of his interests on Major Carnac, and in case of this gentleman not thinking proper to act, he nominated Mr. Amyatt, Mr. Lushington, and Mr. Amphlett[[179]], his attornies.